Hong Kong Teacher Receives Death Threat for Row With Police

A July 14, 2013 photo of Lam Wai Sze, a Hong Kong female teacher who spoke in defense of Falun Gong. She recently received a death threat in a letter written by someone who identified themselves as an "underground Communist Party member." Pan Zai Shu/Epoch Times

A Hong Kong primary school teacher said she received a letter from an “underground Communist Party member” threatening to kill her for admonishing the police during a highly publicized altercation over a month ago.

On July 14, teacher Lam Wai Sze was captured on video shouting at police in Mong Kok, a Hong Kong shopping district, over their behavior when members of the the communist front group called the Hong Kong Youth Care Association (HKYCA) were harassing practitioners of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice persecuted in mainland China. The video was spread on the Internet and went viral.

“We must kill you,” the author threatened. “Cursing the Polish [a misspelling of “police,” given in English in the otherwise Chinese text] is a serious crime. So we must kill you.” The letter included a revisionist account of the June 4 Tiananmen Massacre, where the author claimed that “5,154 chinese soldiers were killed” in the incident, which was supposedly given “hundreds of billions of dollars” by the U.S. government in hopes of overthrowing the communist regime. Taped to the bottom of the page was a rusty razor.

Lam got the letter, attributed to one Lee Kwok-keung, on Aug. 6. The author, claiming he was an underground member of the Communist Party, accused Lam of being an “anti-Communist Party element” and of “being in secret collusion with the Falun Gong [word omitted].”

“You are an anti-communist element. You teach students to oppose communism,” said the author. The author wrote in simplified Chinese characters, which are used and taught in mainland China. People from Hong Kong use traditional characters.

Lam became a public figure in Hong Kong after a video of her arguing with the police went viral after being posted online on July 25. The school teacher intervened after the HKYCA members began harassing Falun Gong practitioners, and the police failed to take any action.

She said in a loud voice, “You police are protecting these communist bandits?” Pointing her index finger, she criticized the police for standing by passively: “Don’t think I won’t say it—you’re well aware of what the Communist Party does, such as daily trafficking in organs, and killing people to peddle their organs, which everyone in the world knows about,” she said. Between pauses in her statements, several people in the crowd clapped in support. Soon after, police threatened and yelled at the teacher.

A version of the video posted on the website of Oriental Sunday, a pro-Chinese Communist Party magazine in Hong Kong, had been doctored and made to present the teacher as the aggressor. In the video titled “Violent Female Teacher Shouts at Police”, most of the incident and her speech had been excised, focusing almost solely on her use of a few curse words.

According to the South China Morning Post Lam has previously received death threats via Facebook, which she reported to the police. Fearing for her safety, she has moved between hotels and relatives’ homes during the last month. She has had to take temporary leave from her job.