Occupy Central
Occupy Central is a civil disobedience movement which began in Hong Kong on September 28, 2014. It calls on thousands of protesters to block roads and paralyse Hong Kong's financial district if the Beijing and Hong Kong governments do not agree to implement universal suffrage for the chief executive election in 2017 and the Legislative Council elections in 2020 according to "international standards." The movement was initiated by Benny Tai Yiu-ting (戴耀廷), an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, in January 2013.
Umbrella Movement
The Umbrella Movement (Chinese: 雨傘運動; pinyin: yǔsǎn yùndòng) is a loose political movement that was created spontaneously during the Hong Kong protests of 2014. Its name derives from the recognition of the umbrella as a symbol of defiance and resistance against the Hong Kong government, and the united grass-roots objection to the decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPCSC) of 31 August.
The movement consists of individuals numbering in the tens of thousands who participated in the protests that began on 28 September 2014, although Scholarism, the Hong Kong Federation of Students, Occupy Central with Love and Peace, groups are principally driving the demands for the rescission of the NPCSC decision.
The movement consists of individuals numbering in the tens of thousands who participated in the protests that began on 28 September 2014, although Scholarism, the Hong Kong Federation of Students, Occupy Central with Love and Peace, groups are principally driving the demands for the rescission of the NPCSC decision.
Occupy Central site in an area surrounding the Legislative Council and Central Government Offices at Tamar were cleared 22-06-2015.
Hong Kong reform vote
The Hong Kong government’s political reform proposal for how the city elects its leader by universal suffrage for the first time in 2017 is based on a strict framework set by Beijing. The plan limits the number of candidates to two or three and requires them to win majority support from a 1,200 strong nominating committee. Arguing that this does not constitute genuine universal suffrage, pan-democratic lawmakers have vowed to reject the package, while pro-democracy groups have protested. The government’s resolution was to be put to a vote by the 70-member Legislative Council in June 2015, requiring a two-thirds majority to be passed.
POST OCCUPY CENTRAL - DAY 229
POST REFORM VOTE：DAY 44
POST REFORM VOTE：DAY 44
Full coverage of the day’s events on 01-08
Coconuts
Second HKU Council representative quits over pro-vice chancellor debacle
A staff representative of HKU Council has resigned following astudent protest at a council meeting centred upon delaying the appointment of a new pro-vice chancellor, stating he does not want to be part of a politicised body.
Microbiologist Yuen Kwok-yung, resigned from the council on Friday, saying that he “had never received political training” and did not have the capability to continue sitting on the council.
He became the second representative to walk out, following the footsteps of Indian postgraduate student Aloysius Wilfred Raj Arokiaraj, who submitted his resignation on July 3, three days after the decision to delay appointment was made by the council. In his open letter (see below) on his resignation, he said the decision to delay “falls short of our expected standards for a world class university”.
Yuen Kwok-yung. Photo: Stand News.
Elected teacher representative Yuen said in the wake of his decision to quit: “HKU is a microcosm of society. Incidents that happen in society will happen in HKU, and vice versa.
“Over the past few years, Hong Kong’s political climate has been in turmoil, and this turmoil would most definitely be brought into HKU.”
He added that as the highest body of the university, HKU Council would “naturally” be infiltrated by politics.
On Tuesday, some 50 students disrupted the meeting of the governing body of HKU in protest against their decision to uphold the deferral of pro-democracy scholar Johannes Chan Man-mun’s appointment as pro-vice chancellor. The council stated that the reason was to “wait for the appointment of a new deputy vice-chancellor”.
Following Tuesday’s protest, ten faculty deans of HKU issued a joint statement(see below), stating that academic freedom and institutional autonomy are the “absolute bedrock” of higher education in Hong Kong. They called for all sides to respect these principles.
The deans also criticised the actions of the students who charged into the meeting on Tuesday evening, and said they were “deeply dismayed by the disruption of the council meeting”.
HKU deans of faculties and Audrey Eu Yuet-mee. Photo: HKU/Stand News/Apple Daily.
Yuen said that the students did not initiate the confrontation on Tuesday, but rather various outside political forces had influenced the council’s decision-making process and eventually angered the students.
Civic Party chairperson and HKU alumna Audrey Eu Yuet-meequestioned the deans’ criticism of the student protesters in an open letter (see below). She urged them to support students over the controversy and persuade council members to process Chan’s appointment as soon as possible.
“Many senior staff and alumni of the University are deeply dismayed … precisely because academic freedom and institutional integrity are being threatened by the very controversial decisions of the university council.”
Pro-establishment newspapers have compared the students’ actions to those of the paramilitary “Red Guards” who supported Mao Zedong during China’s Cultural Revolution.
Billy Fung Jing-en. Photo: HKU Undergrad via Facebook.
On Thursday, HKU Student Union President Billy Fung Jing-en, said onRTHK that the students’ actions were a form of “using force to cease violence”. He said that students had only turned to confrontation after many efforts to protest peacefully, including the use of petitions, sit-ins and public statements.
Fung added that the system “forced” students to take action, and students would not apologise for charging into the meeting.
In a statement issued by the HKU student union on Wednesday (see below), the union described Tuesday actions as a failure. “We indeed failed. We failed to turn the situation round. We failed to restore our university to its rightful place,” the statement said. The union also expressed its “heartfelt grief” towards “the violence in the system and the malfunction of the council”.
Full statements by Audrey Eu, HKU deans of faculties, HKU Student Union, Yuen Kwok-yung, and Aloysius Arokiaraj:
University council member Arthur Li (left photo) reacts to students demanding academic freedom. Lo Chung-mau's attempt at heroism (right) becomes an embarrassment.. Photos: HKEJ
Who’s attacking whom at Hong Kong University?
Despite the smoke screens and the background noise, let’s be very clear about one thing: what’s happening at Hong Kong University is a frontal attack on an institution that in many ways embodies the freedoms and way of life that make this place special.
Only the willfully blind have not realized that the attempts to block the appointment of Johannes Chan as a pro vice chancellor are a direct consequence of the chief executive’s determination to punish anyone associated with the Umbrella Movement protests.
Professor Chan was neither an organizer nor a prominent participant in this movement but his “crime” is to be associated with Benny Tai, who was both of these things.
Thus, the CE is following the ghastly tradition of the worst excesses of the Cultural Revolution where accusations of “guilt by association” were commonplace.
Professor Chan is quite right to stress that the furor over the blocking of his appointment is not principally a personal matter but concerns fundamental issues relating to the future of Hong Kong.
It is no coincidence that universities often find themselves in the forefront of battles to protect liberty, not least because they are custodians of a tradition of free speech and free thought.
It is also no coincidence that they also attract some of the brightest and best young people who have yet to have idealism drummed out of their systems.
The Chinese Communist Party has a long awkward history in its relations with universities. On the one hand, in pre-revolutionary times, they were recruiting grounds for the communists.
Many students joined the party but, unlike the communist experience in Europe, pre-revolutionary universities were sparsely populated with Marxist professors.
This fact alone made them subjects of suspicion.
After the revolution, the universities were purged and purged again.
At the height of the Cultural Revolution, they more or less ceased to function and their libraries were burned.
Fast forward to today and we find that conformity, timidity and an extensive network of control mechanisms are the hallmarks of academic life in China.
What, you may ask, has this got to do with Hong Kong where universities remain free and vibrant?
The answer is in the question because the people who run Hong Kong are determined to change this situation.
However, they know it is a long process so they have to start by sending out clear warning signals of what happens to academics that step out of line.
Anyone who believes it will stop there is an idiot because the anti-democrats have more far fundamental plans for diminishing the autonomy and freedom of universities.
This brings us to the specific circumstances of what is happening right now at HKU.
When the university council was forced to reconvene by public pressure and discuss Professor Chan’s appointment this week, the authorities were keen to portray a picture of the university being in a state of siege.
Contrary to established practice hordes of police were drafted onto the campus.
We now know that council members have been under pressure both from the CE’s office and, more importantly, from the Central Government’s Liaison Office to block Professor Chan’s appointment.
And when the pressure worked on Tuesday evening and yet more feeble excuses prompted yet another decision to delay this appointment, it was perhaps inevitable that impetuous students would foolishly (and counter-productively) attempt something more than passive protest.
Although the consequences have been painted in vivid colors, they actually did no more than burst into the council chamber.
At this point, and in the worst traditions of Italian football, one of the government’s supporters decided to up the ante by keeling over, allegedly after being attacked.
Unfortunately for Lo Chung-mau, his “heroism” was captured on a video recording that shows no evidence of this “attack”.
After this emerged, Dr. Lo denied ever alleging that students attacked him.
However, in the spirit of never letting the facts stand in the way of a good story, this incident provided just what the anti-democrat media was looking for in order to denounce the protests.
The communist press, which evidently has had the irony gene removed from its DNA, went one step further to make accusations of “Cultural Revolution-type behavior”.
The truth is that standing up to the bullying in the university is necessary and those who make facile attempts to pretend that this is some arcane academic dispute serve only to highlight their own stupidity.
Hong Kong’s enemies dress up in all kinds of garb but the most alarming are those who claim not just to be friends but so called “loyalists” whose version of loyalty most certainly does not extend to a defense of our freedoms and way of life.
Fortunately, there are a great many other Hong Kong people whose loyalty to Hong Kong centers around preserving a unique way of life that has freedom at its core.
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