The Bar Association of Hong Kong will cease teaching a course at Peking University after the school barred two of its members from teaching and discouraged a visit by the legal group’s chairman.
According to Apple Daily, the Bar Association’s chairman Philip Dykes made the announcement in a letter to the organization’s members today.
The Bar Association has been sending barristers to teach common law courses at the university in Beijing for several years.
The missive said that Dykes had been scheduled to visit the Chinese university later this year but had to cancel the trip when the school, after issuing an invitation letter for his visa, rang him in May to say it had changed his mind and he shouldn’t come.
The trip was to attend the closing session of the course and also to find out why two HK bar association barristers who had previously taught public law at the university, named as Cheung Yiu-Leung and Hectar Pun, had been told they could not teach the following semester’s course.
In the letter, Dykes called the situation “unacceptable” and said the course would be suspended indefinitely.
According to Apple Daily, the barristers barred by the university had been involved with cases that involved human rights, or have represented social activists.
Cheung is a committee member of the Asian Human Rights Commission and a founding member of the China Human Rights Lawyers Concern Group, while Pun has a track record of representing social activists like ousted lawmakers Leung Kwok-hung, Baggio Leung, and Yau Wai-ching.
According to Hong Kong Free Press, Pun represented Leung after the government challenged a High Court decision to allow male inmates to grow their hair by arguing that men could use their long hair to hide drugs and weapons.
According to the SCMP, Pun was also the senior counsel for Leung and Yau during a judicial review into whether or not the they should be unseated as lawmakers after deliberately misreading their oaths of office.
