IFT duo strike at school, attract police attention

Students walk along with their formal white school uniforms outside the St. Paul’s College during a protest in Hong Kong

Two students from the Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) who stood at the Taipa campus with placards in support of Hong Kong’s recent protests withdrew from the activity after the intervention of campus guards and police, the law enforcement authority confirmed yesterday.

According to a social media post from Monday, two students from the tourism institute were displaying placards at the entrance of IFT’s Taipa campus, in an apparent parallel to student protests in Hong Kong on the same day.

The duo moved to the sidewalk outside after being escorted away by the security guards, who said such activity was not allowed on the campus.

Five minutes after they had been moved, a police vehicle arrived at the scene, causing the two students to decide to terminate the activity.

As written in the same social media post, the two IFT students were in support of a Hong Kong school strike and wanted to hold a similar activity in Macau.

Monday saw the beginning of a new academic year for most education institutions in the special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macau. Strikes were called in Hong Kong to coincide with the first day of school.

The social media post questioned why the students were deprived of their legal right to protest. Some citizens were curious about what would have happened if the students had held placards supporting the diligence of study.

In response to both online and offline questions, Assistant Commissioner Lao Wan Seong of the Public Security Police Force (PSP) confirmed yesterday the existence of the activity.

Lao explained that the people concerned “dressed like students, wore face masks and held placards.” She stressed that holding placards at public locations may constitute a breach of the law governing protests and demonstrations.

In addition, Secretary for Security Wong Sio Chak denied an accusation that his team is spreading political censorship across the city.

He explained that the appropriateness of a location for a protest is evaluated by the Municipal Affairs Bureau, while evaluations of other factors are conducted by the PSP. This has been, as he said, unchanged before and after review of the law.

“If there’s no such provision in the law and [the police] do the evaluation, that’s political censorship,” he said. “But now I’m working according to the law, it’s completely legal.”

It is not the first time that police have been called to investigate minor incidents in Macau that sought to mimic parallel events in Hong Kong.

On August 25, police were called to Nam Van Lake Plaza to investigate a “Lennon Wall” of messages sprawled on post-it notes. Approximately 53 notes were attached on the wall, with messages such as “all five demands must be fulfilled”, “Go Macau People, Go Hong Kong People,” and “no small-circle election.”

Several police officers were dispatched to the scene and the Lennon Wall was removed later on that same day, according to a report by online media All About Macau. Anthony Lam