A Christian anti-gay group has won a Hong Kong government contract to advise teachers on how to teach human rights in the classroom, sparking anger yesterday from gay-rights organizations.
The Society for Truth and Light outbid human-rights watchdogs and academics to run the training program under the government's civic-education scheme, which is aimed at boosting nationalism.
The group has come under fire in the past for condemning homosexuality and opposing gay rights.
Activist Roddy Shaw of Civil Rights for Sexual Diversities deplored the move as "inappropriate" and said the society was ill-equipped to teach human rights.
"We've seen this organization attack not only the gay and lesbian community but also other sectors it feels are immoral," Shaw said.
"They don't have a position to be teaching human rights to high-school teachers," he said.
Homosexuality was only decriminalized in Hong Kong in 1991.
The Society for Truth and Light was unavailable for comment.
However, in what the South China Morning Post reported were extracts from the teaching course outline, the society says one of the themes it will discuss is "excessive use of human rights."
"Following the trend of liberalization, people only emphasize individual rights and ignore one's responsibility and obligation to society," the paper quotes the course outline as saying. "Extreme liberalists always uphold human rights to strike against traditional social values."
"The society hopes, by organizing this program, teachers will understand the true meaning of human rights," it adds.
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS