Faculty members, students and alumni of the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) had signed the online petition by Sunday evening, according to the initiative’s promoters.
According to a statement sent to the press and cited by news outlet Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), the petition was launched on Friday by “a group of students, faculty and alumni” of the university.
On February 12, Miles Kwan Ching-fung, who had launched a petition calling for an independent investigation into the fire that killed 168 people in November at a public housing complex in Hong Kong, announced that he had been expelled from CUHK.
The petition launched on Friday criticises the decision by a CUHK disciplinary committee to expel the 24-year-old as a “procedural injustice.”
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On February 14, the student told HKFP that he had been summoned to a disciplinary committee meeting on January 7 over “multiple acts of misconduct,” but that the committee never disclosed the alleged acts.
The petition argues that the committee “appears to have deprived (…) Kwan of his fundamental, constitutionally guaranteed right to a fair trial.”
The organisers recalled that CUHK’s internal rules state that “cases under police investigation/judicial proceedings (…) should be handled after the outcome of the investigation/court ruling is known.”
On November 26, 168 people died at the Wang Fuk Court public housing complex in the worst fire to hit Hong Kong in nearly eight decades.
Three days later, Hong Kong police arrested Kwan on suspicion of sedition, a crime that can carry a life sentence, after he launched a petition that gathered more than 1,000 signatures.
The student stressed that CUHK admitted it lacked information about his arrest and justified the expulsion on the grounds of an “impolite and disrespectful attitude toward the committee” and an alleged breach of confidentiality rules.
“When the committee considered the evidence insufficient,” that “should have led to the suspension of the proceedings,” the petition states.
The two new accusations were “imposed without prior notice” on Miles Kwan and only “after the conclusion of the hearing,” the document adds.
Furthermore, the student was accused of having an “impolite and disrespectful attitude” merely for questioning “the legal basis of the disciplinary process,” the petition says.
Days after the fire, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu set up an independent commission of inquiry, chaired by a magistrate, to determine the causes of the blaze and its rapid spread.
