Hong Kong Watch responds to plans by Beijing to suppress information regarding the Tiananmen Square massacre in Hong Kong textbooks
According to a report in The Times, the Chinese Communist Party has removed mention of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre from Hong Kong school textbooks submitted for government review.
Three out of five of the text books make no mention of the massacre itself, while the other two have removed significant details including the number of protestors who were killed and the motives behind their discontent.
This development follows the introduction of the National Security Law on June 30th, which requires national security education be introduced into the Hong Kong curriculum. Since the introduction of the law, the Chinese Government has set up a national security centre in Shenzhen for students and teachers who are deemed unpatriotic to be ‘re-educated’, banned the singing of protest anthems in the classroom, and encouraged universities to fire pro-democracy academics, including Benny Tai, one of the organisers of the Umbrella Movement protests in 2014.
Commenting on reports of the censorship of textbooks, Hong Kong Watch’s Chair and co-founder Benedict Rogers, said:
“This is a deeply disturbing development which signposts the death of academic freedom in Hong Kong. It is increasingly clear that the Chinese Communist Party plans not only to silence dissent on the streets but also in the classroom by censoring textbooks, purging academics, and sending students for patriotic ‘re-education’.
The international community must stand in defence of academic freedom in Hong Kong and act to prevent the further destruction of Hong Kong's autonomy and openness, which has already been so severely undermined by recent events. Hong Kong is rapidly coming under the direct control of the Chinese Communist Party, its surveillance state and draconian punishments, which threaten the future for students' freedom of intellectual inquiry and expression, and the free world must stand against that and with those who cherish Hong Kong's fundamental freedoms."
For further information:
https://www.hongkongwatch.org/all-posts/2020/8/12/briefing-developments-in-hong-kong-under-the-national-security-law