A Hong Kong university has fired a professor who covered the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 after city authorities refused to extend her visa.
According to the establishment’s history department website, Rowena He, an associate professor of history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, wrote a book about the Tiananmen exiles in 2014.
For a long time, Hong Kong was the only place in China, along with Macau, where the victims of the Chinese army’s intervention against these peaceful demonstrators, which claimed hundreds, even more than a thousand lives, were tolerated to a lesser extent.
But due to Beijing’s takeover of the formerly semi-autonomous territory, candlelight vigils to commemorate the victims have been banned since 2020.
The professor confirmed to AFP that she had been “sacked with immediate effect”.
A spokesperson for HKCU said that “employment of non-permanent residents is subject to possession of a valid visa.”
“Visa decisions are made by the immigration authority and the university has no influence on the issuance of visas,” the spokesperson added.
Hong Kong immigration officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
The academic had started his position at CUHK in 2019 and was reportedly seeking an extension of his visa.
She received her doctorate from the University of Toronto and previously taught at Harvard University. According to the university’s website, she currently holds a research position at the University of Texas at Austin and says she was born and raised in China.
The issue of suppressing the Tiananmen Square protests is a sensitive one for communist leaders and any commemoration event is banned in mainland China.
In mid-2020, Beijing imposed a drastic national security law on Hong Kong after months of large and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests.
Since then, authorities in the territory have arrested organizers of the annual Tiananmen vigil and removed statues erected on university campuses honoring the victims.