On 31 July 2021, the Education Bureau (EDB) of Hong Kong announced it would cease working with the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union (HKPTU), the city’s largest teachers’ union, with around 95,000 members and representing 90 per cent of the city’s educators. The EDB accused the teachers’ union of “spreading political propaganda” and being unprofessional. The move came within hours of Chinese state media attacks depicting the union as a “poisonous tumour” that must be "eradicated”.
The EDB also cited the union’s involvement with other pro-democracy coalitions, namely the Civil Human Rights Front and the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, both of which had come under pressure from the authorities.
The measure meant that the city government would no longer meet or consult with the educators’ representative body. Members of the union were stripped of their positions on government advisory bodies, and HKPTU’s teacher training courses were no longer recognised.
This attack against the education union came as the city introduced mandatory national security education in its schools in response to months of pro-democracy protests and unrest in 2019. In parallel, the civil service bureau established a “national security hotline” and is said to have received over 10,000 anonymous reports of suspected violations of the National Security Law.
Four teachers were de-registered by the Education Bureau on anonymous allegations about the teachers’ discussions in liberal studies classes and expressions of their political opinions in private. The teachers were obligated to censor the students’ speeches and behaviour under the Education Bureau’s new guidelines to integrate national security into the curriculum after February 2021.
Union leaders accused the authorities of imposing “white terror” on the profession since the onset of the Beijing-imposed national security law in June 2020.
On 10 August 2021, the HKPTU announced that it was to disband. “We have felt enormous pressure,” HKPTU President Fung Wai-wah told reporters. Fung added that the union had tried hard to find ways to continue its operations, but did not find anything that “could solve the crisis.”
