Teachers in Hong Kong have been warned to keep themselves and students away from any US Independence Day celebrations as they might breach national security laws, educators have said.
A text message purportedly sent by the principal of a Hong Kong school to staff said the education bureau’s regional education office had reminded them “to be careful about Independence Day activities organized by the US consulate in Hong Kong, and not to participate to avoid violating the national security law and Hong Kong laws.”
The text was published on Edu Lancet, a Facebook page run by a former manager at the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority, Hans Yeung. It urged staff to be diligent in “protecting” any students who were considering participating, and to discourage them.
Photo: AFP
Another e-mail shared on Edu Lancet told faculty staff that any teacher who received an invitation from an embassy or a foreign organization funded by an embassy must seek permission to attend from the principal for the purpose of “maintaining national security.”
The Hong Kong Education Bureau in a statement said it had enacted policies to help schools “effectively prevent and suppress acts and activities that endanger or are detrimental to national security.”
“Schools have the responsibility to play a good gatekeeper role and to enhance the sensitivity of teachers and students to national security,” it said.
The bureau had enacted “clear guidelines” for schools that required them to “establish school-based mechanisms and formulate appropriate measures, according to their own circumstances and needs, to implement various tasks related to safeguarding national security and national security education,” it added.
The bureau did not answer questions about what laws would be broken by attending any Fourth of July event, or whether such warnings only applied to the US holiday.
Edu Lancet and Yeung, who runs the page to voice concerns from those working with the education system and “expose the current problems,” have been criticized by the Hong Kong government for their posts.
Hong Kong Secretary for Security Chris Tang (鄧炳強) has said Yeung was “making incitements” from his current home in the UK.
The purported directives fit in with tightening restrictions on Hong Kong’s education system, and a push to have the curriculum focus more on national security.
In 2020, then-Hong Kong chief executive Carrie Lam (林鄭月娥) blamed the education system for fueling the pro-democracy protests that rocked the city in 2019, setting the tone for an overhaul that is ongoing.
The Hong Kong government has since altered the school curriculum to include teachings on national security in subjects such as English language, music, math and sports, and to focus more on patriotic education.
It has also banned texts it sees as endangering national security and prosecuted authors.
Teachers in Hong Kong have previously said they felt pressure to self-censor for fear of being reported for remarks seen as unpatriotic.
Since the start of the 2023 to 2024 school year, all new teachers in public sector schools, direct subsidy scheme schools and kindergartens are required to sit an exam on Hong Kong’s mini constitution, the Basic Law, and the national security law.
Hong Kong Secretary for Education Christine Choi Yuk-lin (蔡若蓮) has repeatedly warned of “soft resistance” in schools, and this month said educators had to be vigilant against the infiltration of “hostile forces” through events such as book fairs and extracurricular activities, which “could include undesirable reading materials.”
SPEAKING OUT: After Siranudh Scott’s allegations surfaced, celebrities and public figures took to social media to share their own experiences of sexual misconduct and abuse A high-profile alleged sexual abuse case within a wealthy Thai beer brewing family has prompted a wave of painful accounts from survivors of unconnected abuse in the conservative nation. Siranudh Scott, a member of the billionaire Thai family that founded the ubiquitous Singha beer brand, posted an emotional video this month accusing his elder brother Sunit of repeatedly abusing him when he was a teenager. Sunit, who is in his 30s, later denied the allegations in a video posted online, but Singha parent Boonrawd dismissed him from his executive role with the company on Tuesday last week. “I felt I needed to speak
SEEKING ORDER: Rodrigo Paz said that ‘anyone who wants to destroy the nation will have to deal with this president and the full force of the constitution’ Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz on Wednesday said that the nation was at a “breaking point” after nearly a month of protests that have caused shortages of food, fuel and medicine. Paz, who took office six months ago amid the worst economic crisis there in four decades, is battling a groundswell of fury over his policies. The political capital, La Paz, has been besieged by low-income workers and members of the indigenous majority calling for his resignation. “The country needs order and is reaching breaking point,” the 58-year-old said at a public event in La Paz, renewing his appeal for dialogue. On Tuesday, the Bolivian
A Hong Kong astronaut is to join a Chinese space mission for the first time as part of a three-person crew launching today, as Beijing edges closer to its goal of landing people on the moon. The Tiangong space station — crewed by teams of three astronauts that are typically rotated every six months — is the crown jewel of China’s space program, boosted by billions in state investment in a bid to catch up with the US and Russia. The Shenzhou-23 mission is to blast off at 11:08pm from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwestern China, carrying three astronauts to
UPGRADED ALERT: The risk inside DR Congo is now considered ‘very high,’ while neighboring countries face a ‘high’ threat as the outbreak continues, the WHO said Ebola is spreading faster than responders can track it in eastern Congo, where health workers managed to follow up with barely one in five identified contacts in a single day. Authorities in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo) reported 83 confirmed infections, 746 suspected cases and 1,603 identified contacts as of Thursday, but health workers were able to follow up on only 342 contacts that day — about 21 percent of the total under monitoring — data released by the DR Congo Ministry of Public Health on Friday showed. The figures suggest the response is falling behind the outbreak itself,
RSS