The Standing Committee on Pressure Groups (SCOPG) was a secret committee set up in 1978 by the Hong Kong government to monitor the activities of pressure groups. The existence of this committee was first revealed in the New Statesman on 12 December 1980. The article, written by Duncan Campbell, asserted that any political group had been subjected to surveillance. Furthermore the SCOPG had actively sought to undermine, co-opt or coerce eleven groups that were specifically targeted in a confidential report obtained by the paper. What was even more surprising, the SCOPG had been set up to infiltrate pressure groups. The greatest emphasis was placed on a group called the Hong Kong Observers Due to political pressure the committee ceased to exist in 1983.
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