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Hong Kong’s pro-establishment lawmakers push for surveillance cameras in classrooms to monitor teachers’ speech
- Recording teaching sessions would reveal if students were on receiving end of ‘subversive remarks’, Liberal Party chairman Tommy Cheung says
- Meanwhile, with opposition lawmakers now largely absent, a motion of thanks to city leader Carrie Lam passes on final day of debate over policy speech
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Surveillance cameras should be installed in Hong Kong schools to monitor teachers’ speech, pro-establishment lawmakers argued on Friday as they wrapped a three-day debate of the city leader’s policy address.
Discontent over the education system took centre stage during the Legislative Council session, though a motion of thanks for Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s November policy speech was approved by 40 lawmakers.
Two independent members of the chamber – Cheng Chung-tai of localist party Civic Passion and medical sector representative Pierre Chan – voted no.
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While no such motion passed in 2019, last year’s mass resignation of the opposition camp in protest of Beijing’s decision to disqualify four incumbent pan-democrats means Legco is now almost solely occupied by pro-establishment lawmakers.
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Many of that group on Friday called on authorities to step up the monitoring and regulation of teachers. Liberal Party chairman Tommy Cheung Yu-yan, an adviser to the Executive Council, Lam’s de facto cabinet, suggested placing CCTV cameras in classrooms would reveal if teachers had made “subversive remarks”.
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