Big names including ex-security chief Ambrose Lee join chorus of criticism against Hong Kong university students
Hong Kong’s former security secretary Ambrose Lee Siu-kwong and legislators past and present were among 103 University of Hong Kong alumni who described as “uncivilised” the storming of an HKU meeting last week by students upset with the delayed appointment of a liberal scholar.
The 103 alumni, who also included former legislator Miriam Lau Kin-yee and current lawmaker Elizabeth Quat, said in a letter published in newspapers on Wednesday that they supported academic freedom at the university and respected all members of HKU’s governing council.
But they strongly rejected the use of any violence or “uncivilised means” to express opinions, according to the letter.
Lau, former chairwoman of the Liberal Party and a 1968 HKU graduate, said she backed freedom of speech for everyone, but added students should know there was a protocol for everything.
“Hong Kong is a civilised place,” she told the South China Morning Post. “Even if you disagree with official actions, you cannot do this, especially not HKU students, which is a group I count myself a member of.”
Eastern district councillor Choy So-Yuk, a 1974 graduate, echoed those sentiments.
Choy said the HKU council had delayed its decision over the vacancy of pro-vice-chancellor because of issues that some alumni had with former law dean Professor Johannes Chan Man-mun, who was said to have been recommended for the job.
The students’ intrusion into the meeting on July 28 created a commotion, during which one councillor, Dr Lo Chung-mau, collapsed and was taken to hospital.
It has yet to be determined what exactly happened. Lo said in hospital that he felt his knee being hit, but a couple of days later he said he did not know if he had been attacked.
Soon after the night’s furore, HKU microbiologist Professor Yuen Kwok-yung resigned. He voiced suspicions publicly that some of the people at the commotion were not students, as those people “looked much older and used a lot of foul language”.
The latest letter followed an online petition from another group of HKU alumni that had gathered more than 4,000 signatures as of August 5.
The earlier petition is much harsher; it says the students “interfered brutally in the affairs of the HKU council” and were “threatening the safety of council members”.
But one of the organisers of that signature campaign admitted on a Commercial Radio talk show on Wednesday that she did not really know much about what had happened and had initiated the petition because the videos of the council meeting made her and fellow alumni “very uncomfortable”.
