More clashes at Chinese University over independence posters

About 10 members of a pro-Beijing group held a protest on Sunday and threatened to tear down independence-themed posters at a space given over to students to express their views at Chinese University in Sha Tin.

The move came two days after the institution’s president Joseph Sung Jao-yiu urged the student union to remove materials advocating separatism as soon as possible or face having the university management take them down.

Chinese University has in recent weeks become the main battleground of a renewed independence movement in the city, after banners and posters with the theme of Hong Kong breaking away from China first appeared about two weeks ago. The identity of those responsible for posting the materials was unclear, but the university’s student union vowed to keep them up to protect free speech.

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Lee Man-yiu, external affairs secretary of the university’s student union, told the Post that he spotted an English-speaking woman tearing down pro-independence posters from the union’s “democracy wall” at around 1.30pm on Sunday. The wall, managed by the union, is intended for students to express their views.

After the act, the woman quickly left in a car with a man, while Lee pasted the posters back up.

About an hour later, around 10 middle aged to elderly people from pro-Beijing group Caring Hong Kong Power approached him at the Cultural Square, inside the university, Lee said, telling him they wanted to take down a banner that read “Hong Kong independence” in Chinese.

“They also tried to paste their posters on the democracy wall, which read ‘This place is China’, on top of the independence-themed posters, but I ... called security to help,” he said.

The union also rallied more students to head there to support Lee, who was the sole student there at the time.