Authorities in Hong Kong on Friday said they would release details of the activities of the city’s nebulous “care teams,” which have sparked concerns that they could mimic the local officials and volunteers who carry out government surveillance and implement policy in mainland Chinese residential neighborhoods.
Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs Alice Mak made the pledge after student journalists at the Chinese University of Hong Kong reported that the records weren’t available to the public.
Their YouTube video also revealed that some care teams had asked local people to don their vests and pose as members for publicity shots, to swell the number of apparent “volunteers.”
Since 2022, Hong Kong has been sending “care teams” into residential neighborhoods.
The teams of volunteers are expected to help authorities inform the public, as well as report the views of the public to the government, according to a 2022 document announcing their deployment.
Neighborhood committees and citizen volunteers in mainland China have long been tasked with monitoring the activities of ordinary people, making it easier for officials even in remote areas to monitor what locals are doing, saying and thinking.
From this year, Hong Kong’s “care teams” will receive a funding increase of 50%, according to Chief Executive John Lee’s October 2024 policy address.
Mak said there wasn’t an issue with local residents “supporting” their local care teams by posing for photographs, Now News and HK01.com quoted her as saying on Friday.
She also said it was “appropriate” only to release the care teams work reports — which they submit to their local District Office every six months — after their initial service term of two years was up.
Interviews
Mak’s pledge came after Tsuen Wan District Officer Billy Au told student journalists from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, or CUHK, that the documents “are not available to the public.”
The students also interviewed some people who wore care team official vests to pose for publicity photos and found that they weren’t members of the team at all, according to a video report published by the the journalism faculty’s U Beat YouTube channel on Jan. 3.
“Members of the care team handed blue care team vests to participants to wear,” the video report said. “They gave the vests back to staff after the photos were taken.”
Asked if they were a care team volunteer, one person replied “No ... they didn’t have enough people so they wanted some people to pose.”
The report sparked threats and calls for the sacking of the students' instructors at CUHK on a pro-police online forum, after the students' course instructor and veteran journalist Sum Wan-wah told a local broadcaster they were doing the “basics of journalism” in the report.
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One of Mak’s officials, Clarence Leung, accused the students on Jan. 4 of making “sweeping generalizations” in their report.
Accusations
A letter calling on the university to fire Sum and U Beat editor Francis Lee for “professionally unethical behavior” also circulated on the “Badass Cops” pro-police forum, garnering 40 likes and 155 shares by Jan. 9.
It accused Sum and Lee of “advocating independence for Hong Kong,” discrediting the city’s security laws, “poisoning” the younger generation and imposing their personal political stance on their students, and called on the university to censor its student publications.
“That cockroach teacher is inciting hatred and violence, and spreading poison,” a Jan. 8 comment under the letter said. “He won’t die an easy death.”
“Cockroach” is a slur used by police and government supporters to refer to black-clad protesters during the 2019 pro-democracy movement.
“The new president of CUHK [Dennis Lo] should fire these gangsters in a hurry,” wrote another.
“Fire all the remnants of anti-China chaos in Hong Kong,” read another comment.
Current affairs commentator To Yiu-ming said the letter was a form of “bullying.”
“U Beat were just doing what journalists are supposed to do,” To said. “The entire report is factual, and contains no opinion.”
“The government was also given ample opportunity to respond.”
‘A learning opportunity’
Incoming CUHK President Dennis Lo said he believed the controversy would be “a learning opportunity” for students, without elaborating.
An email from Radio Free Asia to the university requesting information on how many complaints it had received about the video had met with no response by the time of publication.
More than half of the journalists who responded to the latest Hong Kong Journalists' Association survey said press freedom had declined over the past year. More than 90% of respondents said press freedom had declined overall for the fifth year in a row, with many citing national security legislation as a key factor in the changes.
The government said the recent Article 23 legislation would prevent “infiltration and sabotage by hostile foreign forces,” which Beijing has blamed for several waves of mass pro-democracy protests since the 1997 handover to Chinese rule.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Roseanne Gerin.