Kylie Lang: This violence and thuggery doesn’t belong on our campuses
Our universities should be home to robust debate, but never the violence that erupted between pro-Beijing and Hong Kong students, writes Kylie Lang. They should respect the laws of the country they study in.
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Universities are places for thoughtful discourse, agitation and questioning of the status quo.
Ideas can be challenged, tossed around, and turned into action that can change society, for the better.
They are also, at least in my experience, places of respect for difference — of opinions, beliefs and backgrounds.
Education, after all, broadens the mind.
At least it should.
There is no room for violence of the kind that erupted at the University of Queensland this week.
Pure thuggery, intimidation and abuse.
As an alumnus of UQ and others, including the University of Iowa in the US and Kyoto University of Foreign Studies in Japan, I am appalled at the trashing of a peaceful protest.
Anti-Beijing demonstrators arrived at a coffee shop on the St Lucia campus at lunchtime on Wednesday to decry mainland China’s increasing dominance in Hong Kong.
It followed weeks of protests in Hong Kong itself over a Chinese extradition bill and broader concerns about democratic freedoms and human rights.
Within the hour, things got ugly in the Great Court.
Chinese students let loose on the protesters, throwing punches, slamming heads into the ground and biting security guards who’d arrived ahead of the police.
Eyewitness and journalism student Nilsson Jones put it this way: “They (pro-Hong Kong students) were sitting outside one of the main coffee shops on campus, holding some signs, and it was all pretty low energy.
“A bunch of Chinese students rocked up and things escalated. They had speakers and started blasting the Chinese national anthem and some Communist Party propaganda songs. They were chanting, that sort of thing.
“A few Chinese students ran over and grabbed signs and ripped them up and things went from there. There was a lot of pushing and shoving.”
Just a few security guards stood between the two groups of roughly 300 people, he said.
“I saw some of the anti-CCP (Chinese Community Party) organisers being punched and shoved onto the ground. I saw someone smash a drink against someone’s head and a security guard was bitten by one of the (pro-Beijing) protesters.”
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Mr Jones was running a stall at the university’s weekly market day for the journalism and communications students’ society when the violence unfolded.
Police eventually separated the two groups, and the pro-Hong Kong bunch regrouped in a different area and resumed their intended peaceful protest, only to have their opponents strike again, in even greater numbers.
Because that’s what thugs do.
“They surrounded them and brought out the speaker and megaphone again,” Mr Jones said.
“They were chanting, ‘UQ apologise’.”
For what? Preventing people from airing their views in a non-threatening manner? I don’t think so.
Police were called back to restore some semblance of order, with the whole ordeal wrapping up around 4pm.
That’s four hours of police resources that could have been spent elsewhere, instead of on quelling violence that does not belong on any Australian campus.
In a statement, The University of Queensland said its role was to facilitate “open, respectful and lawful free speech, including debate about ideas we may not all support or agree with”.
That’s fair enough, but note the words respectful and lawful, both which apparently eluded the pro-China bullies.
RELATED: Where is our solidarity? We are all Hong Kong Citizens
One protester, Drew Pavlou, posted on social media that his group had been “assaulted four or five times by Community Party students”.
“I was actually punched in the head by two or three ultranationalist Chinese students. Police are currently talking to them,” he said.
I hope police do more than talk because there must be harsh consequences for people who assault others and commit other anti-social acts that constitute crimes under our laws.
Do what you like at home, but respect the rules of the country you’re in.
Australian universities may well be chasing the foreign dollar and accepting more and more overseas students to remain viable, but this should not come at a cost to the positive tertiary environment that should be enjoyed by all.
The 19th century Oxford-educated clergyman John Henry Newman wrote: “A university training aims at raising the intellectual tone of society … It is the education which gives a man a clear conscious view of his own opinions and judgments, a truth in developing them, an eloquence in expressing them and a force in urging them.”
That force, as anyone with half a brain would agree, does not extend to unmitigated violence.
Kylie Lang is the associate editor of The Courier-Mail.
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