University of Hong Kong governing council sacks legal scholar Benny Tai over convictions for Occupy protests
- Tai, an associate professor, learns fate after HKU council holds meeting on matter
- He was sentenced to 16 months in prison last April for two public nuisance offences related to 2014 civil disobedience movement
The University of Hong Kong’s governing council sacked legal scholar Benny Tai Yiu-ting on Tuesday over his criminal convictions for the Occupy protest movement he co-founded in 2014.
Tai, an associate professor of law and outspoken opposition activist, learned his fate on Tuesday night after the HKU council reversed a recommendation by the university’s senate earlier this month that there were not enough grounds to dismiss him although his actions amounted to misconduct.
Responding to his dismissal, Tai said the city’s academic institutions “cannot protect their members from internal and outside interferences”, adding that the university council’s decision “marked the end of academic freedom in Hong Kong”.
08:41
Five years after Occupy: comparing Hong Kong’s 2014 movement with the 2019 extradition bill protests
Hours after the decision, Beijing’s liaison office in the city said in a statement it supported the dismissal as an act that punished “evil” and upheld justice.
“Tai has used the sacred position of an educational institution to spread fallacies and confuse right and wrong, as well as promote illegal [activities] which had misled and poisoned a group of young people,” a spokesman said.
The office added Tai had “organised, planned, carried out, incited and instigated events” including Occupy Central and the opposition camp’s primary elections earlier this month, and that his actions “increased conflict in society and poisoned Hong Kong’s political atmosphere”.
Three sources told the Post that 18 council members supported the decision to dismiss Tai while two were against it. University president Zhang Xiang did not cast a vote, while two other members were either absent or had withdrawn from the talks because of conflict of interests.