Why are Hong Kong academics quitting newspaper columns, and what’s the fear over new ‘red lines’? Three words: national security law
- Prominent columnists, scholars say law worries them, and government no longer cares about public opinion
- Some, however, remain upbeat, saying there is nothing to fear and that only those who ‘initiate revolutions’ or ‘crash the system’ should be concerned
This is the second of a four-part series on the impact of the national security law, one year after it was imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing on June 30, 2020. Gary Cheung and Lilian Cheng speak to academics who have stopped writing opinion columns for fear of breaching the law and others who find the areas for research shrinking because of unknown red lines. Read part one here.
After more than a quarter century of contributing political commentaries to Ming Pao Daily, political scientist Ivan Choy Chi-keung from the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) called it a day on Wednesday.
Choy began penning commentaries in 1995 and, since 2006, has been writing a weekly 2,500-word op-ed column for Chinese-language paper Ming Pao Daily on governance, political reform and local elections.
He has a following, and his columns have drawn the attention of Hong Kong’s political circles. But with the first anniversary of the national security law around the corner on June 30, he felt it was time to retreat.
The wide-ranging law, which bans acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, has had a chilling effect on academics who have been regular contributors of opinion columns to newspapers or have given their views freely when approached by the media.