Critics say the compulsory courses are part of a move to neutralise the pro-democracy movement
A police van carries a member of Hong Kong University Student Union to West Kowloon Magistrates' Courts building over national security law in Hong Kong, China, on August 19 2021. REUTERS/TYRONE SIU Last month, several thousand Hong Kong university students, some of them under the watch of a CCTV camera, were the first to take compulsory courses on the territory’s national security law.
“In principle, making requirements on particular classes is a very serious infringement of academic freedom,” said Katrin Kinzelbach, a political scientist at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, who has conducted extensive research into academic freedom at universities around the world. “Academic freedom means you may study and teach what you are interested in. It also means the freedom to not engage in particular classes.
Baptist University, a publicly funded liberal arts college with a Christian heritage, did not immediately reply to a request for comment on its course or why a CCTV camera was present in the lecture hall. Hong Kong’s schools and universities are now being forced to integrate national security and patriotic themes into their teaching, bringing them closer into line with education in mainland China.
At Baptist University, the course took the form of a two-hour seminar by pro-Beijing lawyer Alex Fan, who previously worked at Hong Kong’s department of justice. In the seminar, he warned students of the sweeping powers of the security law and the severity of punishments for breaking it, according to a 200-page PowerPoint presentation seen by Reuters.
In one section the presentation asks: “Is criticising the government a crime under the national security law?” The answer given is: “It depends. If the criticism involves any of the four major crimes under the national security law [secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with external forces], it may be counted as a crime.”
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