1. Ho Ho went through his social media before the start of the new academic year with a fine-tooth comb. All his political news items, protest photos, and opinions on social issues previously shared on Facebook had to go. He set up new account under a different name, deleting more than 1,000 of his old Facebook friends, keeping only 752. Ho is 30 years old. He works as a teacher in a Hong Kong secondary school that relies on government funding. In the past few months, he has heard a number of stories from colleagues about people having complaints lodged against them with the Education Bureau after strangers took screenshots of their social media comments criticizing the Hong Kong Police Force. Soon after, these people were arrested by police for taking part in the protest movement and forced out of their jobs. The city's education sector has been blamed by the authorities since the start of the anti-extradition movement in June 2019, with teachers accused of inciting students to take part in street protests. Worse was to come with the imposition of the Law of the People's Republic of China on Safeguarding National Security in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) on the city by Beijing at 11p.m. on Jun. 30, 2020. The Education Bureau issued a circular to all primary and secondary schools, kindergartens, and special education schools, requiring schools to "help students correctly understand the relationship between Hong Kong and China," and "strengthen their sense of national identity." In an interview with the Beijing-backed Ta Kung Pao newspaper, Security Secretary John Lee, who sits on the Beijing-appointed National Security Committee charged with implementing the new law, said that 3,113 of those arrested in protest-related cases were in secondary school, while 110 teachers and lecturers, working at all education levels from elementary schools to universities, were also arrested. Lee told the paper: "The politicization of education is a serious issue," bemoaning a lack of Chinese national identity among young Hongkongers. He called for the "active removal of bad apples" from the system, likening them to "a virus that harms national security." So Ho kept a low profile, worried that his past activities and comments might come back to haunt him. He rarely posts on social media now. "Everyone knows what's going on, and what we're not allowed to talk about, but there is no name for those things. This is what we call white terror," Ho says. For Ho and for many of his friends and colleagues, this profoundly depressing, and they started to dread the coming academic year. With the imposition of the National Security Law, schools and universities in Hong Kong now operate in a climate of fear, constantly navigating invisible red lines. University professors who participated in the pro-democracy movement, including University of Hong Kong law professor Benny Tai, lost their jobs. Some academics chose to get out of Hong Kong altogether. Primary teachers have been reported to the authorities for remarks made in a private capacity. Politically sensitive exam questions were removed from public examinations, while references to the "separation of powers" and peaceful civil disobedience were deleted from government-approved teaching materials. Teachers have been at the forefront of establishing this new, and mostly unwelcome, normal. Ho said he has become much more cautious, and takes a number of factors into consideration before doing anything. Things will never be the same again. "I am conflicted, because I am self-censoring in order to hang onto my job," Ho says. "It feels like a bit of a joke saying this, but I still hope to instil the spirit of critical thinking into my students in the classroom." Ho became a teacher in 2012, three years after a series of educational reforms made Liberal Studies compulsory in secondary school. Liberal Studies courses contain six units: Personal Growth and Relationships, Hong Kong Today, Modern China, Globalization, Public Health and Energy, and Technology and the Environment. Ho has always had his own views, but has always prized professional ethics over personal politics. In the classroom, he tries to make a clear distinction between his private and professional lives. He always takes care to differentiate fact from opinion, and encourages his students to debate and construct arguments. Back at the start of his career, Ho felt that there was a lot of freedom in teaching, and that he could discuss anything with his students, including any friction between Hong Kong and mainland China, or Hongkongers' strong sense of local identity. Ho has clear memories of discussing the 2009 student-led protests against China's "patriotic education" program for Hong Kong's schools with his students. He also had class discussions about the meaning of civil disobedience and the rule of law. "We talked about Martin Luther King. We also talked about events in Gwangju, South Korea and the Meilidao incident in Taiwan," Ho recalls, referring to regional examples of civil disobedience and crackdowns on peaceful dissent. "Does civil disobedience violate the rule of law? What does it mean to break the law? These are complex questions, and students need to fully understand them before forming their own opinions," Ho says. And yet, there is very little room for such talk in Hong Kong's classrooms today, he says. The goal of Liberal Studies in Hong Kong was originally to strengthen young people's understanding of civic affairs. But since the movement against patriotic education and the 2014 pro-democracy movement, it has been viewed by the authorities as one of the factors responsible for "inciting" such protest movements. "In the past few years, the talk has always revolved around whether or not Liberal Studies is too political, and whether it radicalizes students," Ho says. "But it's a double-edged sword. How can you ask someone to care about social issues, and yet not allow them their own thoughts and feelings about what is going on in society?" Under the National Security law, Liberal Studies could become nothing more than China's "patriotic education" program dressed in new clothes. Teachers may be required to teach students the background and significance of the law itself, so as to "nurture a sense of national identity." For Ho, this is tantamount to bringing politics into the classroom, and making teachers instruments of government propaganda. Before the start of the 2020 fall semester, teachers were already meeting to check that nothing in their personal teaching materials went beyond the scope of what was written in government-approved textbooks. "This is the safest thing to do: to avoid touching on those topics entirely, so trouble doesn't come knocking at the door," Ho says. But it leaves him feeling bitter to the core. "If the day comes when I am required to teach students to love China and the Communist Party, but I'm not allowed to mention any reasons why a person might not love either of those things, what is the point of teaching them how to form an argument in the first place?" Ho says, adding that the moment this thought first crossed his mind was the moment that he realized nothing would ever be the same again. 2. Ben University lecturer Ben says his students are now being repurposed to keep a watchful eye on him. His realization came just five weeks after the implementation of the National Security Law, while he was teaching a summer class. The class was online because of the coronavirus pandemic. Ben had nonetheless gotten to know his students, their constantly changing video-conferencing backgrounds, and the sounds of their voices. That day, he was talking about totalitarianism and the operations of the secret police. He mentioned Hong Kong's National Security Agency and the huge increase in political tension in Hong Kong. There was a long silence. "Maybe technology has changed the way people are interacting with each other, or whether I am making too much out of a tiny thing," Ben says. "What flashed through my mind at that moment was whether any of the students were monitoring what I said [and reporting back to the authorities]," he says. From that point onwards, he started hearing a nagging voice that he hadn't heard in all his 10 years of teaching. "Did what I said in that class contravene the National Security Law? At what point did I say it, and what did I fail to say?" he says. "All that stuff we have read in books about the workings of totalitarianism has suddenly become our reality," he says. "Isolating people, cracking down groups and organizations that can bring individuals together in a common cause, while at the same time creating the illusion of freedom, and replacing truth with lies," Ben explains. "These are all the hallmarks of a totalitarian regime." Ben falls silent for a long time. "That's a lot like Hong Kong today," he finally says, adding: "But I'm not sure I could say that in class now." The worst thing about the National Security Law is the unknowable, he adds. "You never know where the lines are drawn," he says. "You don’t know if your speech and actions are breaking that law." "This is also part of their plan; to plant the seeds of fear in people's minds. They don't even need to do anything, and they have already silenced you through self-censorship," he adds. "The fears you bring upon yourself are the worst kind," he says. Ben has already been contacted by students worried that they could get into trouble over what they say in his classes. The school where he teaches recently accepted more and more students from mainland China, and Hongkongers are often in the minority in his classes. Some of Ben's students fear that the mainland Chinese students could be working as spies for the state security police, tasked with monitoring the thoughts, words, and behaviors of their classmates and teachers. For Ben, the situation looks pretty similar to the operations of the Stasi secret police in East Germany, and to those of the Kuomintang secret police during the authoritarian rule in now-democratic Taiwan. "The state security police have everyone under surveillance, hold files on everything, and has them monitor and file reports on each other," he says. "But surely the teacher's role is to treat all students equally, regardless of their background or standpoint, right?" he says. "We shouldn't be especially wary of the mainland students." Such are the ethical questions that have been troubling him lately. After one faculty meeting, he told his students they could pass on any concerns about topics discussed in class to him or his teaching assistant. But he knew the old lines of communication were down. By the time the coronavirus had ushered in an era of online classes, Ben had already begun to feel stilted in class, with a sense that political topics should be avoided, and a fear of expressing his personal opinions. He is now thinking about changing the way he teaches. "How do you teach politics if you can't talk about politics?" he questions. "What is politics? Is everything political? What's currently happening is actually the best example I can think of to start such a discussion. But now I have to care what the authorities might think. I also need to have a care for the safety of my students." 3. Jane In the current climate, Jane is seriously. considering giving up teaching altogether and pursuing a social work qualification instead. She started her job as a history teacher in 2019, at the height of the Hong Kong protest movement. Era-defining social movements were unfolding outside the school gates, along with class boycotts, the coronavirus pandemic, and growing political pressure from the National Security Law. For Jane, it was both a blessing and a curse to be a history teacher in such times. "I'm reluctant to say it's too much for me, but there is a much heavier responsibility on my shoulders now," she says. "We are witnessing important historical events right now, a shift in the locus of political power," Jane says. "All of the history we read in books has suddenly gotten very personal, very much in the here and now." She often tells herself that if you care about the truth, you must also be honest and responsible as a teacher. Her students also have high expectations of her. Jane is the youngest teacher in her school, not much older than her students. During last year's protest movement, her students would try to get her to talk about her political views, joking that they should all be shouting protest slogans together. Jane would evade these suggestions with a smile. "Back then, I believed that it was ethical for me as a teacher to keep my private and professional lives separate," she says. But once the National Security Law was imposed on Hong Kong, her simple decision not to say anything became more complex, as new lines were drawn in her mind. "It's as if there's a voice in your head that isn't yours, which whispers in your ear before you do anything, making you worry that it might cause problems, or that it might not be acceptable," she admits. She often wonders whether she will cross these lines in future, should she be required to distinguish between truth and fiction in her role as history teacher. Jane has also been learning about the unresolved trauma suffered by her teenage students. "The protest movement is at a low ebb, and we are now seeing a large number of large-scale police raids and roundups," Jane says. "A lot of students are feeling depressed and desperate." During the past year, some of Jane's colleagues and close friends have decided to change careers from teaching to social work. Jane is thinking about doing the same. "I have seen this too often, how these emotions can destroy a child," Jane says. "I feel that I will always be a teacher in some sense, but right now I have no way to help these children heal at an individual level." "There are multiple versions of history," Jane adds. "Over time, views about history will change, as it is written by those in power." "You could say that history is something created by humanity, and that sometimes it serves the interests of those in power," she says. "History is written by the winning side," she states. In Hong Kong today, Jane feels that history and reality have been gradually revised. On Aug. 8, Democratic Party Legislative Council (LegCo) Member Lam Cheuk-ting was arrested on suspicion of "rioting" at Yuen Long MTR Station on Jul. 21 last year, when white-clad mob attacked unarmed passengers and bystanders with rods and poles. Police told the media that the incident was "a conflict between two factions." They said that the two sides were "evenly matched" and criticized journalists at the scene for only reporting one side of the story, and causing the public to "misunderstand" the incident as an indiscriminate attack. Jane will never forget the images of citizens being beaten up by white-clad thugs on Jul. 21, 2019 in Yuen Long MTR Station, nor the fact that the doors to the local police station were barred during the attack and that thousands of emergency calls went unanswered with no police response for 39 minutes. "Let's say that, 20 years from now, our kids are learning about what happened in 2019 in secondary school," Jane says. "Will the victims have become the perpetrators? Will we even be doing history any more at that point?" (Interviewees' names have been changed to protect their identities.)
