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June 4 anniversary: Hong Kong teachers drop annual ritual of telling students about Beijing crackdown, fearing ‘red lines’
- Wan Chai teacher won’t hold special history class fearing complaints, national security law
- Education Bureau taking complaints more seriously, wants schools to probe anonymous ones as well
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For 30 years, Hong Kong teacher Peter Lee gathered his students together every June 4 to tell them what happened that day in Beijing in 1989, showing them photographs, news clippings and video footage.
Last year, he had to skip his annual lesson about China’s bloody crackdown on student protesters at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, as schools were closed because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This year, he will not go ahead for a different reason – he is worried there might be complaints that his lesson crosses “red lines” under the national security law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing last June.
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“Given the current social atmosphere, I think it’s too risky to repeat what I have been doing,” he said. “I think the school management will say no if I tell them that I intend on conducting that kind of special lesson.”
He is one of two Hong Kong teachers who have told the Post they will not mark this year’s anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown by telling their students about it, because of concerns over the national security legislation.
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