Hong Kong sedition charge ‘conundrum’ for overseas universities

A Hong Kong student enrolled at a Japanese university has been found guilty of sedition under a colonial-era law, prompting discussion over how – and how far – overseas institutions can support students facing repression back home.

Ching-ting Yuen, a 23-year-old undergraduate and Hong Kong native, was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment for the pro-independence social media posts she published while studying in Japan. The results of her trial come half a year after her arrest while re-entering Hong Kong to renew her identity documents this June.

Long viewed as a middle ground between the West and China, Hong Kong has suffered in recent years from a decline in freedoms and heightened censorship, particularly since the 2019 protests in response to Hong Kong’s National Security Law. Last month, a Tiananmen Square historian working at a top institution on the island failed to secure a visa to return, after which her university terminated her employment.

According to local media reports, Ms Yuen is the first Hong Konger known to have been convicted under the colonial-era sedition law over online speech in Japan. Her sentencing shows that prosecutors are increasingly turning to a range of legal tools to pursue cases outside their jurisdiction, scholars believe.

Sicong Chen, an associate professor in education at Kyushu University, said the outcome of the case had “dire implications for students and scholars from Hong Kong”, some 36,000 of whom study overseas, “and many more from mainland China studying and researching in Japan and other democracies”.

He added: “Not only does it violate their human right to free speech, but it also undermines academic freedom in universities in democratic societies.”

Yet Dr Chen said he doubted that many Japanese institutions had given much thought to how they can back students in such circumstances.

“In my university, and probably in other Japanese universities, there is virtually no discussion, let alone policy, about how to support students and scholars under such threats, either potential or real, from Hong Kong and Chinese governments, and indeed any authoritarian governments,” he said.

Teng Biao, a human rights lawyer and visiting professor at the University of Chicago, said the case was a classic example of “transnational repression”. He said such incidents put institutions in a tough position.

“It is not appropriate to limit free speech,” he said. “But these universities do have a duty to speak out when their students are arrested or detained for their opinions by any authority.”

Nevertheless, he said he believed that institutions had few means of protecting students from the long reach of the law.

Alvin Cheung, an assistant professor at the Queen’s University Faculty of Law, agreed.

“In practice, there is not much that universities can do with cases like this,” he said, adding that, in this case, the two complicating factors were that the case involved off-campus expression and that the defendant had to return to Hong Kong.

But Dr Cheung was adamant that universities should do more, including “ensuring the physical safety of such students, both while at the university and on return to their home jurisdictions; and protecting free expression by students” on and off campus.

For instance, institutions could provide “health warnings” for courses that dealt with sensitive subject matter that could get students in trouble in their jurisdiction, he said. Additionally, they could take steps to protect in-class participation in such course – for example, by offering blind grading and prohibiting recordings of classroom discussions.

“At an absolute minimum, I would expect universities hosting such students to emphasise the risks of repercussions upon return to their home jurisdictions; but also to ensure that there is scope for free expression on campus,” said Dr Cheung

pola.lem@timeshighereducation.com