In Hong Kong, Freedom at Universities
Calvin Yang for the International Herald Tribune
The Goddess of Democracy, a
protest symbol, on display at the City University of Hong Kong, which is
hosting an exhibition on the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
By JOYCE LAU
Published: April 22, 2013
HONG KONG — The Goddess of Democracy, a sculpture resembling the Statue of Liberty
that has become a protest symbol, is holding court at the City
University of Hong Kong, which is host to an exhibit about the 1989
crackdown near Tiananmen Square, an event that cannot be discussed
openly in mainland China.
Last year, the university displayed photographs by Liu Xia, the wife of
the imprisoned Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo. PEN America, an organization
that works to defend freedom of expression, called the Hong Kong exhibit
its first on “Chinese soil.”
While that is true — this former British colony was returned to Chinese
rule in 1997 — the complex reality is that Hong Kong operates under its
own laws, which allow students, academics and universities more freedom
than they would have in the rest of the country, particularly at schools
of media, communications and journalism.
On the Web site of the University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media
Studies Center, students can read about a talk that the U.S. filmmaker
Alison Klayman gave about her documentary on Ai Weiwei, an artist who
was detained for two months in 2011 in Beijing and is barred from
leaving the country.
The China Media Project, which is
affiliated with the university’s journalism school, has a regular column
called the “Anti-Social List” that tracks, translates and reprints
posts that the Chinese authorities have censored from Sina Weibo, a
domestic Twitter-like service.
Yuen-Ying Chan, founding director of the Journalism and Media Studies
Center, said by e-mail that she had never felt pressure to avoid
controversies.
Also at the University of Hong Kong is the Public Opinion Project, whose
polls have long been a thorn in the authorities’ side. (The project has
bounced between the Media Studies Center and the Faculty of Social
Sciences.)
Robert Ting-Yiu Chung, who since 1991 has run HKU POP, which studies
public opinion, made headlines in 2012 when his team held a mock
election for the city’s chief executive, who is chosen by a committee
with government ties. Amid broad calls for universal suffrage to be
implemented in the city, 223,000 people participated, despite a
cyberattack that disabled a voting app for smartphones developed by the
university.
At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a student magazine celebrated its 20th anniversary with a series called “Hong Kong’s Coming Culture War,”
which included an article illustrated with a colonial-era Hong Kong
flag — a controversial image sometimes used at protests.
According to government figures, every year Hong Kong’s universities
attract about 9,000 mainland Chinese students, who find themselves on
campuses that are more free and more politicized than those back home.
Meanwhile, cross-border collaborations between mainland and Hong Kong
academics are becoming more common, even when they touch on prickly
topics like the media or politics.
Hong Kong Baptist University’s School of Communication is holding a workshop next month called “Social Media, Regulation and Freedom of Expression.”
While the subject is seen as sensitive on the mainland — where access
to Twitter and Facebook is limited — the event is being held with the
cooperation of the Center for Journalism at Tsinghua University in
Beijing, as well as a foundation in Taiwan.
“Since the topic includes Hong Kong, the mainland and Taiwan, we felt it
was best to have input from all three places,” said Dr. Yik-Chan Chin
of Baptist University’s Department of Journalism. She said that some of
the event’s partners were initially concerned with the use of the term
“freedom of expression” in the title. But, “in the end, the workshop is
in Hong Kong, not the mainland, so we can choose to say what we want,”
she said.
“Sure, there are concerns, but the speakers from Beijing know what they
can say or not say,” she said, adding that “Hong Kong is quite liberal
and people here have even radical views on freedom of expression. I’ve
never felt any pressure myself.”
沒有留言:
張貼留言