EXCLUSIVE New Hong Kong university classes set out dangers of breaking security

HONG KONG, Nov 5 (Reuters) – 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.

The content of the courses, some of which Reuters has seen exclusively, sets out the dangers of breaking the law, in one case demonstrating how a message in a chat group could be interpreted as a serious breach, punishable by up to life in prison.

At Hong Kong Baptist University, at least one CCTV camera was present in the lecture hall, while an unidentified photographer took pictures, according to two students who attended.

The courses represent an attack on academic freedom in Hong Kong’s Western-style university education system, critics said.

“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.”

Hong Kong’s national security law, imposed by Beijing last year, itself stipulates that national security must be taught in schools and universities. Hong Kong’s Education Secretary Kevin Yeung said earlier this year that it was a “requirement” for higher education institutions to incorporate national security education into their curriculum, according to a government statement.

The law punishes anything Beijing regards as secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison.

Hong Kong’s Education Bureau did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the purpose of the courses or their contents.

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.

The introduction of the courses is the latest move by the pro-Beijing government to clamp down on universities and their students, which Hong Kong and Chinese authorities blamed for stoking and leading some of the occasionally violent pro-democracy protests that took place in 2019. Almost 4,000 of the 10,000-or-so people arrested in connection with the protests were students, according to police.

Since the introduction of the national security law last year, at least six liberal academics have been forced from their university jobs, according to a Reuters tally, while student unions have been disbanded or ousted from campuses and student leaders arrested. Starting next year, universities will be required to raise China’s national flag daily, according to education secretary Yeung.

Critics say the clampdown is part of a broader move to neutralise the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. More than 150 people, including many opposition politicians, have been arrested for endangering national security over the past 16 months, while schools, churches, libraries, booksellers and film-makers have all been subject to…