TONY CHEUNG
TONY.CHEUNG@SCMP.COM
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 30 July, 2015, 4:24pm
UPDATED : Thursday, 30 July, 2015, 5:13pm
University vice-chancellor Peter Mathieson is surrounded by students after they stormed the council meeting. Photo: Dickson Lee
A commentary in the Beijing-based Global Timesnewspaper has described the University of Hong Kong students who stormed a university council meeting on Tuesday as “Red Guards”, who were notorious for purging intellectuals during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.
For the second day in a row, pro-Beijing newspapers in Hong Kong such as Wen Wei Po and Ta Kung Pao made the same comparison, but HKU student leader Billy Fung Jing-en said the comparison was wrong.
“The Red Guards were manipulated by Mao Zedong as tools of power struggle, but HKU students have a free mind and know what we are doing,” Fung said.
At the centre of the controversy is HKU’s former law dean Johannes Chan Man-mun, who was recommened for the job of pro-vice-chancellor at the university. But since the candidacy was revealed, pro-Beijing newspapers have criticised Chan for his working relationship with HKU legal scholar Benny Tai Yiu-ting, who co-founded the Occupy Central movement.
The episode in HKU looked a bit like a Hong Kong version of the Cultural Revolution
SHAN RENPING OF THE GLOBAL TIMES NEWSPAPER
On Tuesday, Fung and a group of students stormed the venue where the university’s governing body was meeting after it voted down a motion calling on it to stop delaying the appointment. During the chaos, one of the councillors, Professor Lo Chung-mau, fell down, saying his knee had been injured. He was taken to hospital.
Referring to the incident, Global Times commentator Shan Renping wrote today that “the episode in HKU looked a bit like a Hong Kong version of the Cultural Revolution, and the students the ‘Hong Kong Red Guards’”.
During the 10-year turbulence, Red Guards were notorious for dragging intellectuals to political rallies to be denounced and tortured. Some historians believe that millions were either killed, executed by authorities or committed suicide in the face of persecution.
Shan also accused Chan of mobilising students behind his back.
“It’s just a pro-vice-chancellor post. Since the council postponed the appointment, can Chan show some guts and shout ‘I don’t want the job’? This person seems to have a big [desire] for official posts,” he wrote.
Fung said Shan had misunderstood the students’ demand. He said: “We are not supporting any individual candidate, we are just asking the council [not to delay and] deal with the appointment.”
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education-community/article/1845153/university-hong-kong-student-protesters-described
