Hong Kong’s leader has warned of “external forces” penetrating into the city’s universities, and called on university leadership to protect students against being indoctrinated by anti-China prejudices.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam claimed on Tuesday that “there are external forces quite active in Hong Kong for their ulterior motive,” but she did not give specifics. Those forces are intent on undermining the Chinese government and promoting ideological prejudices against the country, she said.

“These external forces are at work, and how they are acting, penetrating into various institutions in Hong Kong including the universities, is something that everyone in position should be very sensitive to,” Lam told reporters.

Lam urged university management, council chairs and presidents to be “extremely careful” and to ensure students will not take part in unlawful activities or be “indoctrinated by prejudices and bias.”

Separately, a postgraduate student at the University of Hong Kong had reported at least two faculty members to the authorities via the national security tip line, according to an article by The Atlantic citing anonymous sources.

At a closed-door meeting for HKU faculty members in May, two school administrators admitted to attendees that they had been “caught off guard by the speed and breadth of the crackdown across the city,” the magazine reported.

The HKU academics reportedly wanted to know if the university would provide legal assistance if they were arrested over their work, what to do if students reported professors on the tip line and how to respond to the government’s mandate to “promote” national security.

Some faculty members became emotional at the meeting because they felt abandoned by the university. “To say that people feel saddened or let down … these are words that are far too small a representation of the depth of disappointment and really despair and fear in that room,” one attendee was quoted as saying.

William Cheung, chair of the HKU staff union, told Apple Daily he was not aware of any colleagues being reported to the authorities by their students, but said the possibility could not be ruled out. Many HKU teaching staff were also worried about being required to swear an oath of allegiance to the Hong Kong government and to uphold the Basic Law, he said.

Apple Daily has contacted the University of Hong Kong for comment. The police said it would not comment on individual media reports.

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