Once again Hong Kong Up In Arms against Mainland

[Ray]

HK protests over 'brainwashing' classes

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

HONG KONG -- Hong Kong students and teachers protested Tuesday for a sixth-straight day against plans to introduce Chinese patriotism classes, as political tensions rise days ahead of legislative polls.

Protesters at the government headquarters said they would not vote for parties that supported "national education," which they say is a bid to brainwash children with Chinese Communist Party propaganda.

"I feel national education is an important issue because it could affect many generations of children's education," second-year university student Cheung Nga-lam said at the demonstration, which began on Thursday.

"The new Legislative Council members will definitely have an influence on the issue because whatever they say affects society."

The former British colony goes to the polls on Sunday to elect a new 70-seat legislature, but power will continue to reside with the pro-Beijing executive appointed by Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying.

Leung has ignored protesters' calls for a meeting and refused to abandon plans to implement the new education policy, which schools can adopt voluntarily from this week and will become compulsory by 2016.

"We are willing to talk to the anti-national education parties, but the prerequisite of the dialogue cannot be either to withdraw or not to withdraw," Leung told reporters.

Most schools have said they will not introduce the subject this year and want to see more details about how it should be taught.

The government says the curriculum is important in fostering a sense of national belonging and identity, amid rising anti-Beijing sentiment in the semi-autonomous southern city of seven million people.

But critics say the lessons extol the virtues of one-party rule and gloss over events like the bloody Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in 1989, and the mass starvation and extrajudicial killings of Mao's Cultural Revolution.

The protests have swelled in number from a few hundred in the mornings when students are in class, to several thousand at night. Up to 40,000 joined the rally on Saturday despite heavy rain, organizers said.

It was the second mass demonstration against the education policy in two months, after up to 90,000 people took to the streets in July.

A handful of students and teachers have gone on hunger strike to drive home their opposition to the plan. One woman was hospitalized on Tuesday after refusing to eat for several days.

There have also been calls for teachers and students to boycott classes.

"People are extremely interested in this issue so it is impossible for it to be discussed behind closed doors by a small representative body," said hunger striker Wong Hak-lim, a 56-year-old high school vice principal.

Democratic Party lawmaker James To called on Leung to "immediately withdraw the package."

"It's my view that the government isn't genuine and really wants to brainwash children because they think the Hong Kong people aren't patriotic enough," he said at an election forum on Monday.

Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 but maintains its own independent legal system which guarantees civil liberties not seen on the mainland.

HK protests over 'brainwashing' classes - The China Post

Once again Hong Kong is proving to be a thorn and a headache to Mainland Communist China.

When Hong Kong joined Mainland China, surely they would have realised that Communist China would slowly bring them to their Communist way of thinking, or were they naive?

Well it maybe brainwashing, but that is the way the Mainland Communists want - to have a society that thinks like one, acts like one and is a total monolith. That is how the Communists the world over operate and it is nothing new.

If Hong Kong tries to act too independent, then one should not be surprised if the Mainland Communists take harsh measures, as they have always done for any nationality that has tried to chart their independent ways, be it the Tibetans, Uighurs, Inner Mongolians or whoever.

Hong Kongers must understand that, even if they are not quite in line with the Northern Chinese way of accepting without question whatever is told to them and totally subservient to the Communist diktats!

This attitude that they are different and are Cantonese or whatever will make them pay heavily.

Make no mistake, the Mainland Communists do not like dissent!

 

[agentperry]

hail the queen

 

[s002wjh]

consider every nation taught its student the history of the country. whats the big deal?

 

[rockdog]

People from former colonized land normally have less understanding to government authority and patriotism, situation in HK is not that bad, at least majority people don't oppose it. Look at our big neighbor, the whole nation been governed by others for 100+ yrs, that's why we can see more serious such issues, like that's lots of anti government organizations, poor performance in OG, brain drain to western...

 

[Yusuf]

Wonder when the first salvo will be fired by the people of HK to seek formal independence from China.

 

[Zebra]

Hong Kong Standoff Over 'Patriotism' Lessons Heats Up

September 4, 2012, 11:14 AM HKT

A government standoff with students and parents determined to resist Hong Kong's new lessons in patriotism deepened last night, as thousands of protesters gathered outside the city's legislative complex demanding the city's chief executive back down.

Despite calls by protesters, city leader Leung Chun-ying did not make an appearance, and government officials reiterated that the city would continue to move forward with its plans to enact "moral and national education," which aims to foster a greater sense of patriotism among local residents. Locals worry that the plan–introduced in 2010 by previous leader Donald Tsang–will amount to a form of "brainwashing." Government-funded education materials praising the Communist Party, distributed among schools earlier this year, have further stoked fears that the initiative will promote only a positive view of China's one-party state.

The thousands of protestors were also assembling to support 10 hunger strikers—which included both students and retirees—who've been camped outside the government offices refusing food since Saturday, when up to 40,000 demonstrators rallied in the rain to resist the government's plan. Though several have dropped out since yesterday afternoon, the rest have vowed to continue their hunger strike indefinitely outside the government offices, backed by dozens of other protesters who have also pitched tents and have been camping there to support them.

"The government ignores our feeling, so I use my body against my government," hunger striker Ken Chan, 23, a student at City University, told the Wall Street Journal.

While the government has said it wants to listen to protesters' views, it has refused to abandon plans for national education curriculum, despite anger over the initiative that's roiled the city for months. Police said last night that 6,500 protesters gathered outside government offices, while organizers put the figure closer to 8,000. In July, another 90,000 residents, including stroller-pushing parents and children, also took the streets to protest the plan.

The curriculum will be taught in schools on a voluntary basis beginning this semester, which began yesterday. Mandatory implementation of such a curriculum—which schools are free to individually design—will begin in 2015. Students and alumni across Hong Kong have been organizing petitions to reject the curriculum, while many well-wishers across the city have donated rations to the protesters camped outside government offices, including heaps of candy bars, pears and bananas and boxes of soy milk.

As of Tuesday morning, three hunger strikers had abandoned their fast after feeling ill. One of the hunger strikers, retired professor Ho Chi Kwan, was carried away on a stretcher Monday night to seek treatment at a local hospital after she felt too unwell even to drink water. However, three more have joined their ranks, and the rest have continued to press on. Volunteer medical personnel are visiting the site three times a day to check on participants' vital signs, organizers said.

On Monday night, the government said it was focused on reassuring the public and moving forward with the plan. "The important thing is to ensure that the public concern or the parents' and the students' worry about the so-called brainwashing will not happen," chief secretary for administration Carrie Lam told reporters.

Hunger strikers continued to maintain on Tuesday morning that they have no plans to give up. "I'm still going tough," said one 63-year-old retiree and hunger striker in an interview this morning. James Hon Lin-Shan, a retired English teacher who said he has been fasting since Saturday, says he will press on as long as he can: "I'm listening to the doctors' advice. If they tell me I cannot go on, then I leave. We are under good care."

– (Te-Ping Chen. Follow her on Twitter @tepingchen)

Hong Kong Standoff Over 'Patriotism' Lessons Heats Up - China Real Time Report - WSJ

 

[Ray]

consider every nation taught its student the history of the country. whats the big deal?

Of course, one has to know one's history, but then what should be the reason that people of the same country reject that history and term it as brainwashing?

What is so distasteful of that history to the people of Hong Kong?

 

[Ray]

People from former colonized land normally have less understanding to government authority and patriotism, situation in HK is not that bad, at least majority people don't oppose it. Look at our big neighbor, the whole nation been governed by others for 100+ yrs, that's why we can see more serious such issues, like that's lots of anti government organizations, poor performance in OG, brain drain to western...

People who have been colonised should be the first one that are stirred with patriotism.

Without that one cannot get liberated from the colonialists!

It maybe that the colonialists were better who allowed individual freedom and choice and less of authoritarian and overbearing govt than those who have mere 100 years of Shame to stir them up for patriotism.

Maybe that is why the ex colonial people of HK find the whole issue stuffy and becoming clones of a authoritarian State!