Hong Kong Public Servants have been told they must accept that there are limits on their rights to free speech.
The warning came from Secretary for the Civil Service, Patrick Nip Tak-kuen in a radio interview in which he doubled down on earlier comments that Public Servants owed their loyalty both to Hong Kong and China.
“While it is not wrong for us to carry out our duties as Hong Kong Civil Servants, we should not only consider issues from a localist perspective,” Mr Nip said.
“Sometimes there is even a hostile attitude towards the mainland,” he said.
“Only when taking the big picture into perspective can we work one country, two systems to our advantage.”
Leaders from two Public Service unions, both appearing on the same radio show before Mr Nip, had asked for clarification on how they should balance their identities and whether they would be penalised for saying the wrong thing.
Chair of the Union for New Civil Servants, Michael Ngan Mo-chau (pictured) said Mr Nip’s ‘dual identities’ assertion had never been heard of before.
“Civil Servants have a responsibility and right to raise their concerns about policies.
When we do this, it is because we hope to decrease conflict in society,” Mr Ngan said.
However, Mr Nip said the dual identity was “not a new thing, just rarely discussed”.
Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Federation of Civil Service Unions, Leung Chau-ting, said Mr Nip’s comments politicised and complicated the matter, and raised concerns among Government workers over their freedom of speech.
Mr Nip later said this did not mean that Public Servants would lose their freedom of speech entirely.
“While policies are still being debated, all Civil Servants should speak freely, but once a policy has been made, then they should put their full effort into executing the policy.”
“However, as Civil Servants, they should also be careful of what they say, even on their private social media pages,” he said.
Hong Kong, 11 June 2020
