Hong Kong gov’t to train community care teams to promote awareness of national security, official says
Hong Kong Free Press
The Hong Kong government will train community care team members to help raise national security awareness in their respective districts, the city’s home and youth affairs minister has said.
The initiative, first mentioned in the 2023 Policy Address, aimed to equip care team members with “basic knowledge” to assist the authorities in promoting national security awareness within the community, Secretary for Home and Youth Affairs Alice Mak said on Friday.
Chief Executive John Lee said in his policy blueprint last year that, as part of the city’s effort to enhance national security education, the government would prepare teaching materials and provide training for “district-based tutors” to promote national security education in the community.
The city’s leader repeated the initiative again in the 2024 Policy Address delivered last week, saying that authorities would train tutors at the district level to promote national security education in the community.
On Friday, Mak said was no “strict indicator” for the number of tutors a care team should have. But each tutor should promote national security awareness to around 30 residents in their district per year, through organising various activities, visits, talks, or by handing out publicity materials, the official said.
“I believe that safeguarding national security is the responsibility of every Hong Kong citizen. I have a responsibility, and you have a responsibility. Care teams, district councillors, and members of the district ‘three associations’ all share this responsibility,” Mak said in Cantonese.
Community care teams were introduced in 2022 as part of Lee’s scheme “to improve district governance” and to support authorities’ work across 18 districts. The city currently has 452 care teams and more than 5,000 volunteer members.
A government spokesperson told Ming Pao on Friday that training for district care team members will begin next month, and at least 2,600 district-based tutors would be trained next year. It was estimated that more than 78,000 residents benefit from the initiative, the spokesperson said.
The government added the training course would be taught be senior educators, and the lessons would include interactive activities and visits to the National Security Exhibition Gallery, which opened in August.
The Hong Kong government has reinforced national security and patriotic education since Beijing imposed a national security law on the city in 2020 in the aftermath of the extradition bill protests. The city also enacted its own security law, commonly known as Article 23, in March.
Separate to the 2020 Beijing-enacted security law, the homegrown Safeguarding National Security Ordinance targets treason, insurrection, sabotage, external interference, sedition, theft of state secrets and espionage. It allows for pre-charge detention of to up to 16 days, and suspects’ access to lawyers may be restricted, with penalties involving up to life in prison. Article 23 was shelved in 2003 amid mass protests, remaining taboo for years. But, on March 23, 2024, it was enacted having been fast-tracked and unanimously approved at the city’s opposition-free legislature.
The law has been criticised by rights NGOs, Western states and the UN as vague, broad and “regressive.” Authorities, however, cited perceived foreign interference and a constitutional duty to “close loopholes” after the 2019 protests and unrest.
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