Letters | Carrie Lam insists that an independent inquiry into Hong Kong police conduct is not needed. She is wrong

Time and again, our chief executive has insisted that there is no need for an independent commission of inquiry, because the current Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) mechanism dealing with complaints against the police is already good enough. This opinion is unsupported by the facts.

The IPCC announced on July 2 a proactive fact-finding study, stating, “The reason for the study is that the IPCC is unlikely to be able to effectively discharge its statutory functions without a complete picture of the public order events, where all stakeholders, the public and the police, have had the opportunity to tell their side of the story.” There was no suggestion in the IPCC’s August 16 announcement extending the scope of its work that the study was to become anything else. The study is, therefore, intended to provide no more than context to the complaints it is asked to monitor. It is not – and does not pretend to be – an investigation.

An inquiry may compel the attendance and examination of witnesses; the provision of data to the IPCC is voluntary. An inquiry is a judicial proceeding, the IPCC’s work is not. The findings of the study, limited as they will be to the conduct of some members of the police, cannot be relied upon as facts when the history of these tragic weeks comes to be written.

Finally, the IPCC will not study allegations of protesters’ criminal conduct, of foreign influence or funding, of the entrapment consequences of using police decoys or of how government’s neglect of duty to govern has placed police lives at risk. These are equally important questions which only an inquiry can satisfactorily answer.

The IPCC chairman apparently acknowledges these practical limits and is now reported as not ruling out the need for an inquiry in due course, once other restorative steps have been taken. But, as our former chief justice has observed, an inquiry would of itself “have a therapeutic effect for society and would assist in the process of reconciliation.” His sage advice was expressed over six weeks ago and the longer we are kept waiting, the harder that task will be.