Peking Uni Faces Boycott Calls Over Crackdown

The prominent Peking University in Beijing is facing a boycott of its 120th anniversary scheduled for next month as faculty and students rile against an alleged attempt by authorities to silence a student who demanded details of a probe into a sexual abuse allegation.

"My friends and I feel disgusted. There is no reason for the school not to reveal information about the ongoing investigation," said an undergraduate student from Peking University, who requested anonymity.

"We don't accept the school's claim that student protesters are manipulated by external forces."

The uproar began when a student wrote an open letter this week accusing a staff member at Peking University of trying to intimidate her over a petition she launched urging the school to make public an investigation into a 1998 sexual abuse case.

Yue Xin, a foreign languages student, co-authored a petition with around 20 others demanding the university release details of the probe into allegations a student was driven to suicide after being sexually abused by a professor.

The professor, who now teaches at Nanjing University in eastern China, was suspended pending the investigation after the allegations emerged earlier this month.

The global #MeToo movement against sexual harassment has been concentrated in university campuses in China, and the authorities have tolerated some social media commentary about sexual harassment allegations in recent months. But some officials have dubbed them as inspired by foreigners.

In her open letter, Yue said a student adviser came to her dorm at about 1am on Sunday, with Yue's "terrified" mother in tow, and demanded she delete all information related to the petition from her phone and laptop.

Yue wrote she had also received veiled threats from university officials over whether she would be allowed to graduate.

She said the university's actions had caused her mother to have an "emotional meltdown", and had "broken their relationship."

"When I saw my mother crying, slapping her face, falling on her knees, and threatening to commit suicide, my heart was bleeding," she said in her letter.

The student's missive was quickly taken down from Chinese social media after it went viral, only to resurface on the blockchain service Ethereum on Monday night, attracting hundreds of comments that are virtually unassailable.

Yue and Peking University did not respond to requests for a comment.

The School of Foreign Languages said in a statement on Monday that the councillor called Yue's mother "out of concern" after they were unable to reach her on Sunday.

Yue was not the first student to be speak out about the case.

Another student from Peking university, Deng Yuhao, wrote on WeChat that he was summoned by university authorities at midnight on April 7 after he penned a letter with others demanding transparency on the same 1998 case. His message has since been deleted.

Similar cases of students being called in for questioning after signing online petitions related to other sexual harassment cases have emerged at other universities, according to Chinese feminist activist Xiao Meili.

Officials at her alma mater Communication University of China had asked students whether they were "influenced by foreign forces" when they penned a letter raising concerns about campus abuse, she said.

"Chinese universities are wasting time clamping down on students instead of tackling the issue of sexual harassment," she said. (AFP)