A Hong Kong secondary school accused of turning a blind eye towards bullying is now insisting it takes a “zero tolerance” approach to violent student behavior as yet another video emerged purporting to show a student being harassed by classmates at the Ma On Shan campus.
The six-second video — the third one in a week — has a banner across it that reads “bully,” and shows a teenage boy being pinned to the ground by other boys, while another student can be seen appearing to smother the boy with a sweater. While this is happening, the boy that has been pinned down can be heard telling the others to stop, while other students can be heard in the background yelling, “Don’t hit him!”
The video, and the two that preceded it, was purportedly taken at the Yan Chai Hospital Tung Chi Ying Memorial Secondary School. Following the release of the first video, which showed a student being pinned down, stripped, and spanked, school administrators maintained that no bullying had taken place.
Police disagreed, arresting eight teenage students on suspicion of common assault before later releasing them on bail.
Reached for comment after the release of the latest video, a spokesperson for the school told Coconuts HK that they were looking into whether its students were indeed involved, and stressed that they would not tolerate any form of bullying.
The spokesperson maintained that the school would take appropriate action concerning the videos and media reports of suspected bullying involving its students, and will notify the police if appropriate.
Social media users claiming to be current and former students of the school, however, have commented that such incidents are commonplace, and that school administrators have done little to curb them in the past.
According to Apple Daily, the latest video first appeared on a closed Facebook group for Ma On Shan residents yesterday afternoon. The original post has since been deleted.
The newspaper identified the poster as a man surnamed Yip, who wrote in the video caption that the clip was sent to him by a friend of his and a current student at the school.
Speaking to Headline Daily, Yip said that bullying was routine when he was at the school, adding that bullying targets changed every day when he was there.
“Sometimes it’s someone in the grade below, sometimes a classmate, and sometimes it’s someone in the class next door,” he said.
Yip, who is now studying abroad, told the newspaper that when he was a student there, he was once held down by a group of students and punched and kicked. He told his family about the incident, and his family reported it to the school.
But according to Yip, no action was taken as his teacher felt it was just a minor incident, and he later had to transfer to a different school.
He told the newspaper that even when the school found out about bullying incidents, it would only lecture the students involved and forbid them from going out for lunch.
Other students wouldn’t help those being bullied, he added, calling the abuse “just a form of entertainment for others.”
The first video to depict bullying at the Ma On Shan secondary school was posted online last week, and shows a group of teens pinning down a boy with three chairs, pulling down his pants, spanking him, and twisting his ear. A second video appeared online days later showing a group of teens forcing another boy onto a desk and elbowing him in the back.
Police arrested eight boys aged 17 to 19 in connection with the first incident and said they were investigating the second.
Police also confirmed to Coconuts HK today that they are investigating the latest video, but had not confirmed that it was taken at the same school.
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