A group set up to uphold the status of the Cantonese language in Hong Kong has disbanded after its leader was questioned by police officers claiming it was in breach of a national security law.
Andrew Chan, founder and convenor of Societas Linguistica Hongkongensis, said he was shutting down the group with immediate effect after national security police turned up at his former home while he was away, searching the property without a warrant.
"I have decided, with the guidance of legal counsel, to cease all operations of the Societas Linguistica Hongkongensis, effective immediately, in order to ensure the safety of my family and former members," Chan wrote in a post on Facebook. "Dissolution procedures are also initiated."
Cantonese, the lingua franca of Hong Kong, has long been regarded as a conduit for opposition to rule from Beijing, and any attempt to assert the city's unique identity is now regarded by the authorities as "secession," punishable by lengthy jail terms under a national security law imposed on the city by the ruling Chinese Communist Party in 2020.
In October 2022, Chinese social media platform Douyin pulled the plug on a live-stream host broadcasting in Cantonese, which is also spoken in the southern province of Guangdong.
Chan said he made the move after national security police turned up at his former residence, where his family members still live, searching the property without a warrant.
He said officers claimed that one of the entries to the society's Cantonese-language essay competition had violated a national security law that criminalizes criticism of the government, along with words or actions deemed to incite "independence" for the city.
Chan removed the essay from the group's website on the same day, he said.
"In light of the circumstances mentioned above and to avoid any adverse impact on my family members and former participants of the [Society], I have taken the difficult decision to halt all operations of the Societas Linguistica Hongkongensis," he wrote.
"Regrettably, I have had to halt my efforts to safeguard Cantonese in Hong Kong."
‘Safeguarding linguistic rights’
Chan said his group had campaigned for 10 years to "safeguard the linguistic rights of Hong Kong people," and focuses in particular on Cantonese and traditional Chinese characters.
He said he had received death threats and was forced to leave his job in 2018 after he spoke against a mandatory Mandarin-language exam for students at the Hong Kong Baptist University, and his group was reported to the authorities as a "radical, anti-China" organization.
The Communist Party-backed Wen Wei Po newspaper repeated those claims in a report on Aug. 28.
"On the surface, it claims to promote Cantonese, but this is really ... independence in disguised form," the paper said. "[Chan] deliberately sought to separate Hong Kong from mainland China."
"The organization has frequently cooperated with a number of opposition organizations and vigorously opposed the government's plans for [patriotic] education in primary and secondary schools," it said.
In 2016, the dystopian Hong Kong film "Ten Years" imagined the eventual banning of Cantonese – the city's current lingua franca – under draconian rules imposed by the ruling Chinese Party, to be replaced by Mandarin, mainland China's national language. The authorities banned public screenings of the film.
While that scenario has yet to take place, the authorities have styled expressions of a uniquely Hong Kong identity as a form of " independence" activism, banning protest slogans calling for a return to the city's former freedoms.
Chan's Societas Linguistica Hongkongensis reported in 2018 that more than 70% of the city's primary schools were offering classes with Mandarin as a teaching medium, while free-to-air broadcaster TVB switched to the simplified Chinese characters used in mainland China in its subtitles as early as 2016.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.