In this lecture by the former Dean of Law of the University of Hong Kong, Professor Johannes Chan, we were taken on a whistle-stop tour of the history of the legal and political confrontations between Hong Kong and the mainland government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Protesters during the Umbrella Movement. By Pasu Au Yeung via Wikimedia Commons

Most people’s recent images of Hong Kong are dominated by the “Umbrella Movement” of 2014. The mostly student protestors were pushing for the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPCSC) in mainland China to allow a free selection of candidates for the Hong Kong Chief Executive and Legislative council.

This was the culmination of increasing tensions between the two regions as they have spent the 20 years since Hong Kong was returned to China testing the boundaries of their relationship.

Since the protests, the NPCSC has been looking to exercise greater control over Hong Kong. Publishers and journalists have disappeared and academia has been interfered with. So what has gone wrong in this relationship?

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Written by Greg Tinker.

The history and the future of Africa, problems and threats facing African people and inspiring stories that go unreported were among the subjects discussed by prominent African academics in fields as diverse as medicine, politics, archaeology and architecture at African Question Time, the centrepiece of UCL’s Africa Voices series of events and discussions launched last month, which was chaired by Martin Plaut, former Africa Editor of the BBC World Service.

The discussions were a fascinating insight into ongoing debates around Africa, but was any consensus reached?

(left to right): Dr Peter Waiswa, Dr Caroline Wnjiku-Kihato, Martin Plaut (chair), Prof Adam Habib and Dr Ibrahima Thiaw © 2016 UCL / Jacqueline Lau

Africa’s challenges come from both within and without

When talking about the issues facing the continent, the panel agreed that it is not as simple as ascribing them to external forces, or saying they are entirely of Africa’s own making. According to Dr Caroline Wanjiko-Kihato, an urbanist based in South Africa, the lack of agency is the biggest problem. As Africa’s people don’t have control over a large extent of their economies, there are blurred lines between what they can and can’t change. Corruption, she said, is not just an African problem: it exists all over the world and needs to be tackled wherever it is found.

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Unusually for a Lunch Hour Lecture, Professor Roger O’Keefe (UCL Laws) spoke without the support of slides for nearly an hour about international efforts to protect cultural heritage in war zones – because he believed that images illustrating instances of cultural damage would simply be too depressing.

Monument Arch in Palmyra, Syria. Now destroyed by IS.

International law

International law prohibits the damaging of cultural sites during war, and almost all UN member states have signed up to this. These agreements are often criticised however for failing to protect a number of cultural sites from damage or destruction.

This has particularly been the case in the Syrian civil war, where a number of high profile sites such as crusader castles and ancient temples have been damaged.

However, as Professor O’Keefe pointed out, few laws are perfect: for example, people still carry out murder despite strong laws against it and serious punishments for this crime. In his view, the law against the damaging of cultural heritage sites, while not perfect, makes important efforts to protect these historical areas.

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This Lunch Hour Lecture by Professor Henrietta Moore (UCL Institute for Global Prosperity) looked at humans’ ability to give things in nature; plants, animals, even mountains and rivers, a consciousness and assign intentions to them. Can this help us to build a better relationship with nature and build a prosperous future?

The Athabasca Glacier on the Columbia Icefield

Professor Moore opened by talking about a modern art project that was just a neon sign of a telephone number. When the number was called and it connected, the caller could hear the live sounds from a glacier.

So we can hear the glacier, but can it hear us? Many people in the past have certainly believed so. Tribes living on glaciers in Canada believed that the glaciers were social spaces and would react to being disrespected, and that the glaciers particularly disliked the smell of frying bacon. People interpreted the will of the glacier though its “surges” where the glacier would expand or shrink.

During the Little Ice Age, from the 16^th to the 19^th centuries, the glaciers moved so far into France that the local people assumed that they had angered it. They ran to it with swords to drive it away and brought a bishop to bless it.

Many societies around the world continue to venerate forests, rivers and mountains and believe that nature must be compensated if angered or damaged. Ecuador and Bolivia have enshrined these rights in their constitutions. Can this help us form a moral framework to protect nature?

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