Hong Kong’s chief executive aspirants to be pressed on law to protect whistle-blowers
Several members of Election Committee to choose next leader want candidates to consider a law protecting those disclosing high-level abuse
Contenders in the race to become Hong Kong’s next leader are set to face awkward questions about the introduction of a new “whistle-blower protection law”, which would make it far easier to expose abuse of power in high places than at present.
The move to highlight the issue is being led by a group of academics – one of whom was at the centre of a high-profile case of alleged whistle-blower retribution at the University of Hong Kong – as public debate continues over police being called in to investigate leaks of information surrounding the city’s problematic new air traffic control system.
The group, from the Higher Education Integrity Concern Group, will also demand that the city’s next leader set up an integrity office to monitor misdeeds in academia and in the innovation and technology sector.
“Their answers would be reflected in our support for them,” said Wong, convenor of the group. In 2014 Wong was dismissed from his job as an assistant professor in HKU’s department of chemistry after he accused his then supervisor, Professor Yang Dan, and two other doctoral students of falsifying research results in a paper published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Chemical Society.
