New research documents the repressive effects of Hong Kong’s national security laws. This week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report titled “We Can’t Write the Truth Anymore,” detailing the decline in academic freedom and the rights to freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly in Hong Kong. The 80-page report is based on interviews, conducted between October 2022 and June 2024, with 25 academics and eight students from all eight publicly funded Hong Kong universities. Here is a summary of some of the main findings:
University officials have harassed the once influential student unions at all eight universities in Hong Kong. They have cut off administrative support to these unions, refused to collect membership dues for them, denied them gathering spaces and offices, and pushed them off campuses to become entities legally separate from the universities. The result is that none of the student unions can continue to effectively function as elected representatives of the student bodies.
University administrators have scrubbed clean notice boards known as the “Democracy Walls,” removed “Goddess of Democracy” statues and other memorials reminding people of the Tiananmen Massacre of pro-democracy protesters in 1989, and replaced them with large barriers and planters, objects that literally and physically obstruct the free exchange of ideas.
University officials have punished students for holding peaceful protests and gatherings, and have broadly censored student publications, communications, and events. University security guards—some former police officers—have been empowered to tear down student posters, and film and monitor those who hold unsanctioned public events.
[…] Most students and faculty interviewed said they self-censor regularly on any Hong Kong and Chinese socio-political topics to avoid trouble. They do this, for example, when expressing themselves in the classrooms, when writing and researching academic articles, when applying for grants, and when inviting speakers for academic conferences.
[…] A few academics reported direct censorship. One said that their department administrators repeatedly stopped them from offering courses on topics that the Chinese government considers sensitive, including threatening them that they would not get tenure if they continued to do so. Four academics said the university administrators and academic publishers censored their academic articles; one said his university reported him to the police for an article he wrote. [Source]
In both Hong Kong and mainland China, increased government influence in universities and shrinking space for free expression has pushed many young people to flee abroad and curtailed transnational information flows. Covering the report for University World News, Yojana Sharma highlighted the effects of declining academic freedom, even beyond Hong Kong’s borders:
[Report author Maya Wang, associate China director at HRW,] said: “The transformation of Hong Kong’s universities has implications far beyond the city. It’s about how the world understands China at this critical time when the Chinese government’s influence globally is raising a lot of concern and interest.”
Referring to Hong Kong’s unique past during which it had few barriers to access and it fell outside of the Chinese government’s control, Wang said: “It is at this time that Hong Kong, which has played an enormously important role as a window into China, has closed, in particular, in the form of the space of academia, and that has implications for how the world understands Chinese history, politics, economy, technology, and you name it.
“That space has been important, especially as the world is eager for knowledge about China as it takes on an increasingly global role, and as the Chinese government is increasingly manipulating and controlling such knowledge.” [Source]
The Hong Kong government condemned HRW’s report, alleging that the use of pseudonyms to protect the identities of certain interviewees is “a tactic frequently adopted by anti-China forces.” All but two interviewees preferred to remain anonymous. The report mentioned that one Hong Kong academic half-joked that he was “risking his life” by being interviewed, while another withdrew her interview days afterwards. The report also documented numerous cases of faculty and students who faced retaliation for their public political expression. On top of its criticism, the government also asserted that Hong Kong continues to enjoy various freedoms related to expression and education under the National Security Law, a claim widely rejected by human rights groups and the U.N.
HRW’s Maya Wang told the Hong Kong Free Press on Thursday: “We’re disappointed that the [government] has failed to respond to this detailed report – which is also based on many publicly available media reports – with a substantive statement. We would welcome the Hong Kong government to provide details on exactly which part of the report they felt was biased or inaccurate.” The findings in HRW’s report appear to be supported by other evidence of declining academic freedom in Hong Kong. Matthew Leung at RFA reported on Thursday that members of Lingnan University’s student union were pressured by the administration in ways that limited their freedom of expression:
“I felt the atmosphere was very tense,” said [a student who gave only the nickname Fern for fear of reprisals, and who once served on the Lingnan University Student Union Press Bureau,] of her time there. “It’s not a place for spontaneous activism or a citizens’ debate.”
[…] “They might call and ask students what they’re planning to do and where, or maybe the national security police will call and tell them not to go ahead, as a ‘reminder’,” she said.
Another Hong Kong university student who asked to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals told RFA Cantonese that both students and faculty are extremely careful about what they say in public these days, for fear of being reported to the authorities.
[…] Chung Kin-wah, a former assistant professor in social sciences at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, said the universities no longer function like places that encourage exploration and debate.
“What they’re doing now isn’t really a university education at all, because the universities are even suppressing the student unions … to hound them out of existence,” Chung told RFA Cantonese. [Source]
In related news, a Hong Kong district court sentenced two Stand News editors to prison for sedition on Thursday. Chung Pui-kuen was sentenced to 21 months, and Patrick Lam received an 11-month term but was released on medical grounds. The pair were convicted in August by a judge handpicked for national security cases, marking the first such conviction and sentencing of journalists since the British handover in 1997. As Kelly Ho from the Hong Kong Free Press reported, the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) condemned the ruling and the uncertainty it created for other journalists seeking to avoid prosecution for simply practicing their profession. Like students at universities, journalists fear that they, too, “can’t write the truth anymore”:
The prosecution of the former editors caused “irreversible harm” to the city’s journalism industry, as many journalists lost their jobs after the outlet was forced to cease operations, the press union said.
HKJA raised concerns that neither the prosecutors nor the judge in the Stand News case had “drawn clear boundaries” for the media sector in terms of sedition. The offence, originally outlawed under a colonial-era law, was incorporated into the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, with its maximum penalty raised to seven years in jail, or 10 years if foreign forces are shown to be involved.
“This uncertainty can only make journalists in Hong Kong more worried about being blamed at every turn, hampering their ability to perform their constitutionally protected duties,” the HKJA said in a statement. [Source]
