Professor said he feared arrest over 2019 protest article

A Hong Kong professor left the city after hearing that his university allegedly contacted the police over an article he had written about the 2019 protests, joining a growing number of artists and academics emigrating amid concerns about declining freedoms, writes Hillary Leung for Hong Kong Free Press.

The university has denied making any such report. However, Justin Wong, who worked at Hong Kong Baptist University’s visual arts department, told HKFP that he left the city within days of hearing in November 2021 that police had allegedly been notified about the article produced for an academic magazine. “The school did not tell me anything. I just heard from different unofficial channels that the police [were] called,” Wong, who is now in the United Kingdom, said.

Written in the wake of the anti-extradition bill protests, Wong’s article analysed the role that visual symbols – such as yellow umbrellas, the masks from dystopian film V for Vendetta and a pig mascot from popular forum LIHKG – played in the months-long demonstrations. The article’s design featured popular protest slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times”, with the characters replaced with abstract-looking blocks. The slogan has been criminalised under the national security law.
Full report on the Hong Kong Free Press site