The National Security Law for Hong Kong has proved effective, with the separatist sum of all anti-China troublemaking forces known as the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China now falling apart because of its subversive nature. Fearing that they could be prosecuted next, most member groups lost little time in abandoning the alliance. Among them is the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union, which officially dropped out of the alliance at the end of last month.
The HKPTU has been a major driving force of the subversive agenda pursued by the alliance, earning a lot of praise and support from hostile Western powers for preaching separatism and unlawful behavior in secondary and even primary schools under the guise of education
The HKPTU has been a major driving force of the subversive agenda pursued by the alliance, earning a lot of praise and support from hostile Western powers for preaching separatism and unlawful behavior in secondary and even primary schools under the guise of education. It has poisoned the minds of many students with blind prejudice and bias toward the Communist Party of China and Chinese mainland compatriots. As a result, hundreds of schoolchildren were arrested for participating in illegal assemblies and/or for criminal vandalism in recent years. Some of them were caught red-handed preparing for terrorist attacks this year. As an “influential” player with bragging rights among member groups of the alliance, the HKPTU simply has too much dirty laundry to hide or deny and had no choice but to abandon the ship that is the alliance, even though it was already too late.
Luo Huining, director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, concluded in a speech this year that those clamoring for “an end to one-party rule (in China)” would destroy the foundation of “one country, two systems” and were the real enemies of Hong Kong society. Over the years, the alliance made blatant attempts to subvert the fundamental system of China by organizing various, often illegal, activities to fuel hatred toward or misgivings about the State as well as to undermine national security and harm Hong Kong’s stability and prosperity along the way. Furthermore, the shady and messy relations between the alliance and the HKPTU, which advertises itself as the largest educational organization in Hong Kong, inevitably attract ample suspicion of criminal deals over subversive activities.
The HKPTU and the alliance used to share the same core group of members and therefore, the alliance borrowed the venue of the HKPTU to hold most of its activities in the past. For instance, it was reported that in May, the executive members of the alliance held a secret meeting with leading members of the HKPTU at the latter’s headquarters in Mong Kok. The HKPTU also allegedly let the alliance use its bank account for funds raised locally and overseas. It encouraged schools and like-minded groups to join the subversive activities. After so many years of collusion they are practically inseparable, to the point that HKPTU President Fung Wai-wah vowed that the HKPTU’s political standing would not change after leaving the alliance. There is no way the HKPTU can ever convince the public or the relevant authorities it now has nothing to do with the alliance.
The HKPTU has, since its establishment, used its look as a professional education workers’ union to inflame anti-China sentiment among students. The offenses it has committed are too numerous to count and the HKPTU has become one of the main roots that sprouted many riots in Hong Kong. Let’s not forget pernicious ideas such as “Hong Kong independence”, “city-state theory”, “achieving justice by violating the law”, etc., promoted within and beyond the education sector in the name of “free speech” and “academic freedom”. The HKPTU also compiled textbooks of liberal studies to slander “one country, two systems”, in a bid to fuel animosity between Hong Kong and the mainland by poisoning the minds of innocent schoolchildren.
Although it has been more than a year since the enactment of the National Security Law, the PTU Promising Bookstore in Mong Kok is selling books that glorify the criminal behavior of participants in the “black revolution” of June 2019 through June 2020. Meanwhile, the HKPTU has gone out of its way to stigmatize and demonize national education, because patriotism is a threat to its control over the education profession, obviously. In doing so, it has victimized numerous students by depriving them of basic knowledge beneficial to their healthy development and future success as upright and responsible residents. As a result, some students became mindless pawns damaging the overall interest of Hong Kong society for the profit of the anti-China forces.
During the “black revolution”, the HKPTU not only defended teachers who hurled hateful verbal abuse at the Police Force but also repeated unfounded claims of “police brutality” while turning a blind eye to violent attacks by some students against police officers performing their duty of maintaining public order. Recently, the Hong Kong University Students’ Union Council passed a motion to mourn and appreciate a lone-wolf terrorist who stabbed himself to death after seriously wounding a police officer without provocation. Naturally, the incident attracted overwhelming public condemnation of “mutual destruction” advocates who incite domestic terrorism on a daily basis, but the HKPTU chose to remain quiet for obvious reasons, not the least being its long-held hatred of law enforcement authorities.
The author is a current affairs commentator.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
