Even if they succeeded in their applications, they were surrounded and harassed by Chinese Communist organizations, and even violently seized the publicity, forcing them to suspend their activities. Some Hong Kong students’ organizations have taken the initiative to collect more similar cases and write a report to further reflect the situation to the government, hoping to protect the freedom of expression on campus.
Jamie (a pseudonym), who will graduate this year from one of the top universities in the city of London, was not aware of what was happening in Hong Kong during the anti-revisionist movement, and Jamie wanted to set up a student organization with several international students from Hong Kong to focus on Hong Kong issues in order to improve communication with her classmates, but the student union refused, “They didn’t say exactly They didn’t say exactly why, some said maybe our initiative was too sensitive, but the truth is that there are various student organizations on campus with different political orientations, so why is it only for Hong Kong issues?”
The inability to set up a student organization prevented Jamie and the girls from going through the normal process of applying for events on campus, so they had to work with existing student organizations. “It just so happened that Amnesty International’s on-campus chapter was working on the theme of protecting human rights and the right to protest, so we discussed working with them to speak out on Hong Kong issues.” In the end, they were able to use Amnesty International’s name to apply to the university for a two-day exhibition on demonstrations and police brutality in Hong Kong outside the Student Center, explaining the causes and consequences of the anti-revision movement and showing footage of the police brutality issues involved.
The first day of the exhibition at the end of November last year, a morning down very smoothly, “to visit students from all over the world, and even mainland students, one of them I was very impressed, he had an exchange at CUHK so there are many friends, recently learned that they are very frightened, and can not attend classes forced to return home from the dormitory, want to know what happened, we explained to him after the CUHK incident He also expressed his indignation. But after noon, there are mainland students with the language threatening them to be careful, “We will have people from the Federation of Students. The “Federation” that the student referred to is the Chinese Students and Scholars Association of the United Kingdom (CSSAUK), which according to its website is “supported by the Education Office of the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in the UK” and is claimed to be the largest Chinese association in the UK.
According to Jamie’s observation, CSSAUK is very powerful on campus and can mobilize mainland students to vote in the student union to reject issues that are not in line with the Chinese Communist Party’s wishes, “They will call on mainland students to vote via WeChat, saying that they will be given red packets after voting.”
The government’s response to the incident was to allow them to take pictures of their heads as they wished. I don’t understand what they want to say.”
Jamie described feeling angry and helpless at the time, “We were just exercising our rights as students to express our opinions and promote communication, but we were harassed. The government has been asking people to leave, but why not ask the troublemakers to leave?
But Jamie then discussed with his peers, but still respect the school’s decision to leave first, “but we are very afraid of being followed by troublemakers, so a group of people are hiding in other buildings for several hours before returning home.” That night, the university was informed that the exhibition scheduled for the following day had also been cut.
Jamie and the others complained to the student union afterwards, questioning the decision to cut the exhibition, but the student union and campus security only shirked their responsibilities: “Actually, I have been studying in the UK for almost 10 years, and I never thought that doing something right on campus would become so unsafe and even be obstructed by the university.”
After the incident, some British students expressed their sympathy and dissatisfaction, saying that the UK is a free country and they should not be forced to express their opinions with their faces covered, not to mention that the school’s handling of the situation really undermines freedom of speech.
Kitty (pseudonym), a student at a prestigious Russell Group school in London, also had a similar experience, she was on campus on October 1 of the previous year with a few Hong Kong students improvised Stand with HK rally, inviting all students who support Hong Kong people to participate, there were a dozen Hong Kong and local students attending, each holding homemade literature and shouting slogans in support of Hong Kong, not long before the Mainland students arrived, and called them in Mandarin as “the “Hong Kong people”. I still remember that some of them waved the reversed five-star red flag, and it was a very funny feeling.”
But with the other side of the crowd of nearly 100, the atmosphere also began to tension, security forces immediately intervened and separated the two groups of people, and asked Kitty and others to leave, “but obviously we did nothing, just sitting and shouting slogans, they came to harass us, why not ask them to leave?”
Kitty was holding a homemade anti-revision movement chronology, “suddenly a very fierce face of mainland students flashed out to me, staring at my chronology, and then glared at me, fierce one hand ripped off my literature and threw it on the ground.” The security guards immediately took away the people involved, and again asked Kitty and others to leave first, Kitty group worried that the situation would get out of hand, so they had to give in.
Afterwards, friends of the mainland students living with Kitty found out that Kitty and her companions had been identified, and their full names were posted on mainland social groups and accused of being “Hong Kong independents” and “cockroaches”.
Kitty was very worried, and repeatedly sent emails to her tutor, who was assigned to take care of issues other than her studies, for help, but they were all like mud and cattle in the sea. It was not until Kitty went to his office and asked for an interview that she was told he didn’t know how to handle the situation and referred her to a senior tutor, “who was much more positive than before and explained to me, but he couldn’t solve it either. The most disappointing thing for me was that it became so unsafe to voice my opinion on campus.”
In fact, Kitty and other people in the incident and then apply to the university in solidarity with Hong Kong people’s activities are repeatedly delayed, and finally approved with conditions, “the condition is that we can not voice, which makes me realize that in the school in fact we have very little space to voice on Hong Kong issues.” Kitty pointed out that the school is “buy the Chinese Communist Party is afraid” : “because afraid that there is no mainland students tuition fees.”
ONWARD, a think tank funded by the ruling Conservative Party, published a study last year that said British universities were overly dependent on tuition fees from Chinese students and that there was ample evidence that the Chinese Communist Party and its manipulative organizations were undermining academic freedom and research in the British academy.
Tom Tugendhat, chairman of the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, has said that the Chinese Communist Party will use various means of intimidation, such as withdrawing research funding from British academics or withdrawing Chinese students, to silence British academics on sensitive issues, stating that “academic freedom in the UK is being eroded.
In view of this, the Hong Kong students’ organization “Hong Kong Sense” started to collect cases of harassment by suspected Chinese Communist organizations on campus after students expressed their support for the Hong Kong movement last year, hoping to submit a report to the government for further action. Basil, one of the founders, said the number of cases received so far is very small, “We guess it’s because some people think their experiences are too insignificant, but in fact we all need to reflect the infiltration of the Chinese Communist Party on British campuses.”
Basil stressed that the identity of the participants is absolutely confidential, and the data will be destroyed after use, hoping that students with similar experiences to Jamie and Kitty, whether from Hong Kong or not, can contact them and provide information.
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