Two significant things are happening in Hong Kong. On the one hand, there is a rising tide of street protests and, on the other, there is growing official intolerance of the right to protest.
This impression is succinctly confirmed by figures released this week by the police showing that the number of demonstrations last year rose more than 20per cent to 6,878, while the number of arrests at these demonstrations has increased almost sevenfold, from 57 to 440. However, after these arrests, once it came to actually charging alleged offenders, prosecutors could only find cause to institute charges in 46 cases.
In some ways, this is good news because it means that, despite a very marked police crackdown on protests, the legal system evidently remains in the hands of those who are sticklers for the law.
It might be argued that little can be gleaned from arrest figures because they only represent the extreme end of the protest syndrome. However, demonstration organisers are now reporting that it is becoming harder and harder to obtain police permits for protests and that increasingly onerous conditions are being imposed on these events.
Trouble almost always arises when protests are blocked. When the police act sensibly, allowing protesters to reach their target and disperse, there is almost never any problem.
The suspicion lurks that the new hardline response to protests emanates from the relatively new police commissioner, Andy Tsang Wai-hung, whose public pronouncements create an impression that he sees his job as curtailing the right to protest.
But it may well be that his actions are a reflection of a more general official intolerance of protest. Government leaders, especially the chief executive, now rarely appear in public without such elaborate security arrangements as to preclude any chance of direct contact with the public.