On July 1, a black-shirted assailant stabbed a police officer in the back in Causeway Bay, puncturing his lung, and then fatally stabbed himself. The officer, who was on crowd control duty at the time, is now recovering from his injuries. His assailant, Leung Kin-fai, was a 50-year-old loner with an anti-police, anti-China background, and his crime was described, by the secretary for security, Chris Tang Ping-keung, as “a lone-wolf-style of domestic terrorism”. By any yardstick, this was a despicable offense, with its victim selected at random, and its sheer horror united decent people in a shared repugnance of political violence.
This, however, was not how everybody saw things. On July 7, the University of Hong Kong’s Student Union Council (“the council”) adopted a motion to “express its deep sympathy at the death of Leung Kin-fai; offer its sympathy and condolences to his family and friends; appreciate his sacrifice to Hong Kong”. The function of the council is to oversee the running of the union and to liaise with the university management, and 30 of the representatives at the meeting endorsed the motion, with two abstaining. Prior to the meeting, they also observed a minute’s silence in remembrance of Leung.
Not surprisingly, but as the participants must have intended, there was outrage once the motion became public knowledge. The wounded officer, together with his family, friends and colleagues, must have been disgusted, and it would also have aggravated their suffering. The university itself “strongly condemned” the council for whitewashing violence, and the eight heads of Hong Kong’s publicly funded universities said it was “particularly regrettable” that some people had attempted to glorify the July 1 attack.
On July 9, following suggestions that the motion had breached the national security law, the council backtracked. The student union president, Charles Kwok Wing-ho, who had promoted the motion, said he now believed it was “extremely inappropriate”, and it would be withdrawn by the council. All seven members of the union’s executive committee also resigned, with Kwok declaring that “we have also failed what our predecessors have built up”.
Although it is unclear if the council’s change of heart is genuine, it would be surprising if all 30 representatives had undergone a Damascene conversion in barely 48 hours, and it smacks of a belated attempt to save their skins. In any event, the motion was an affront to criminal justice, and intolerable in any place which values decency and the rule of law. It was contemptuous of the feelings of the injured police officer and his relatives, and a cruel provocation of the police force. For a student body to declare that it appreciates the sacrifice of an individual who has tried to murder a police officer betokens a perverted, and dangerous, mindset, which can have no place in any civilized society.
Apart from anything else, the union’s motion sent out an alarming message to young people, including schoolchildren, many of whom are naive and may take its content seriously. It gave the impression that people who use violence against police officers are praiseworthy, as they have made a “sacrifice” for Hong Kong. This, of course, may tempt the impressionable to try to follow suit.
As the 30 students have not only disgraced themselves but also shamed the university, the question of disciplinary action will need to be considered. The university’s motto is “wisdom and virtue”, and those behind the motion have trampled both underfoot. As it appreciates, the university can have no truck with students whose actions are designed to legitimize violence and endanger police officers, and it must act decisively before this poison spreads.
The chairman of the university’s governing council, Arthur Li Kwok-cheung, has said that the management will be considering the propriety of expulsions for those responsible for the motion, given that it was “indecent and not acceptable”. As the council members who approved the motion were “basically supporting violence and the attack on July 1”, he added that “we should let relevant authorities look into whether the new security law has been violated”, emphasizing that “they have to be accountable for what they have done”.
On the available evidence, it may not be easy to establish an incitement to commit terrorism, contrary to the National Security Law (Art.27), the offense some observers have suggested. The council’s act in issuing the motion may simply be too remote from the substantive offense of terrorism, even if reliance is placed upon inferences, and it could be hard to establish the necessary mens rea. It may, however, be less difficult to prove an offense of sedition, contrary to the Crimes Ordinance (Sect.10), which criminalizes any act done with a “seditious intent”, a term defined in various ways (Sect.9). A seditious intent may, for present purposes, either be an intention to bring into hatred or contempt the administration of justice, or else an intention to promote feelings of ill will and enmity between different classes of the population.
Applying those two definitions to the known facts, the attempt, through the motion, to legitimize violence against police officers engaged in maintaining public order may amount to an intention to bring into hatred or contempt the administration of justice, and, therefore, prosecutable as sedition. Alternatively, the attempt, through the motion, to poison the minds of the youthful and the gullible in order to generate hostility towards police officers may amount to an intention to promote feelings of ill will and enmity between different classes of the population, and also prosecutable as sedition. There are certainly grounds for suspecting that sedition may have occurred, under one or other of the two limbs, and perhaps both, and this could be a fruitful area for police inquiries.
Quite clearly, the students behind the motion had acquired twisted values from somewhere, and it does not take a genius to work out from where. Although the government proposed to introduce moral and national education into the schools in 2012, this, following organized protests by political activists who feared a loss of influence, did not proceed, leaving anti-China educators in control of many of the classrooms. In consequence, all too many young people graduated from their schools infatuated with the West, hostile to their own country, and even ashamed of their own race. This, as intended, played straight into the hands of the protest movement and its foreign backers when they launched their insurrection in 2019.
On July 10, therefore, the chief executive, Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, emphasized that Hong Kong must “boldly push ahead with patriotic education”, and instill basic values into the schools. She noted that its absence in the past had undermined the students’ sense of national identity, and produced serious consequences. Her analysis was impeccable, and, once the underlying problems in the schools are resolved, it will help to ensure that students entering the universities understand right from wrong, and also appreciate their responsibilities to others. Once that is achieved, they will never again seek to legitimize political violence against the forces of law and order, let alone glorify attempted murder.
The author is a senior counsel, law professor and criminal justice analyst, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong SAR.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.