An 800-strong protest march was the beginning of one new group’s effort to protect civil values from the designs of the religious right, writes Nigel Collett.

On Sunday, February 15, a new group took to the streets to protest against the fundamentalist Christian right’s growing voice in Hong Kong politics. The march occurred just a few weeks after 18-year-old Form 7 student Alva (or Aliber) Chun formed a group on Facebook named the Civic Movement Network (CMN), which rapidly gathered numbers of like-minded liberals (2,772 now and still rising) who have become very angry over the last few years at what they see as the lying and bullying behavior of the Christian right. (The group’s Facebook site is at www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=47471402827.)

In early February, Chun and his 25-member organizing committee pledged that they would get more than 500 CMN supporters out on the streets within two weeks. On February 15, somewhere between 700 and 800 people marched from the Lai Chi Kok MTR station along Cheung Sha Wan Road to Boundary Street. They did so, they proclaimed before marching off, “to show their belief in a broad and open civic society and to fight the closed and insular society ruled by intolerance, misinformation and bigotry which the Christian right is seeking to impose on Hong Kong.”

The mission statement Chun drafted for CMN, which is on the Facebook site, expands further:
“We call ourselves ‘The Civic Movement Network.’ We come from many walks of life, including students, professionals, teachers and parents. Some of us believe in religion, others do not, but despite our differences we share a common belief. Together, we treasure the core values of our civic society—equality, human rights, democracy, rule of law, mutual dialogue, rational debate, tolerance, free and independent thinking, pluralism, transparent governance, care and concern for minorities and underprivileged groups, respect for an individual’s rights and freedom to choose their lifestyles in pursuit of their happiness as long as others are not harmed.”

The CMN is outraged by the way they believe Christian fundamentalists have tried to hijack recent public debates by appearing before Legco in a large number of ostensibly separate groups, so as to be accorded more time and attention than their real numbers warrant. There such groups have misrepresented the case for extending the Domestic Violence Ordinance to same-sex couples as a Trojan horse for same-sex marriage, and argued that the welfare of local children hinges on the widening of the Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance to cover the internet.

The CMN has also documented on its Facebook site examples of the way some fundamentalist Christians misuse their positions of authority in Hong Kong’s schools and social services. The Facebook site shows copies of letters handed out by fundamentalist teachers for their pupils and their parents to submit to Legco and the government in support of conservative Christian views, letters so similar in form to official school letters that parents have, according to the CMN, been duped into sending them in the belief that they were complying with the wishes of their children’s schools. The CMN has also started to collect details of cases in which teachers have publicly abused gays and lesbians.

The CMN’s members are now working on another issue which disturbs them. They have evidence, they say, that fundamentalist teachers are teaching creationism and “intelligent design” as acceptable alternative theories to evolution. They fear that fundamentalists have their sights set on amending the secondary school syllabus, which is now being redrafted for issue in September, to include a provision in the biology syllabus ensuring that students are “encouraged to explore” explanations other than Darwinian evolution.

The marchers who turned out on February 15 came from many walks of Hong Kong life; most were young, and some of them portrayed their protest as a revolt by young netizens against the conservative establishment of their elders. The march’s organization was self-funded and all the groups whose banners were carried were financed by their volunteers. There were new groupings here, on the streets in Hong Kong for the first time, including the Hong Kong University’s Social Work and Social Administration Society and a group named TruthBible.net.

Some participants, as the latter indicates, were Christians of a liberal persuasion, including Chan Sze-chi, senior lecturer in theology at Hong Kong’s Baptist University, who blessed the march with a prayer at its start. Towards its close, the march deliberately passed the Prince Edward offices of the fundamentalist Society for Truth and Light, one of the principal opponents of the domestic violence legislation. Marchers tied blue ribbons on nearby railings as a sign of their dislike of the policies advocated by the organization.

The organizers made it clear that the march was just a beginning for the CMN. “We will organize workshops and public talks for the people to hear our views,” said Virginia Yue. Fellow organizer Ken Lam added: “The fundamentalists want to censor the Net and impose their conservative views on our society. People who value their beliefs must fight. This march is just the start.”