LettersAs Hong Kong police-protester conflict continues, who bears responsibility if someone gets killed?

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Riot police arrest an anti-government protester in Prince Edward MTR station on August 31. Police officers from the Special Tactical Square, known as “raptors”, stormed into a train at the station, hitting and pepper-spraying people. Photo: Handout

Published: 6:35am, 7 Sep 2019Updated: 6:35am, 7 Sep 2019

What the police did on the night of August 31 at Prince Edward MTR station was brutality rarely seen in public in any civilised country. Such beatings usually happen at police stations or jails well away from cameras.

Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu’s statements are flatly contradicted by the video evidence, as clearly seen the Post’s report (“Hong Kong security chief John Lee praises police for railway station actions during night of protest mayhem”, September 2). It shows members of the police’s Special Tactical Unit engaged in thuggish behaviour – beating presumed protesters in an enclosed space where they had no possible escape.

The entire MTR station was closed, and the police could have arrested anyone inside without resistance. Instead they went in with batons swinging and put civilian “lives in danger”. Meanwhile, the police use the fear of officers’ lives being in danger to justify warning shots when it is one of them getting beaten with sticks.

The actions of the raptor thugs are almost the moral equivalent of the vandalism of the protester thugs. Both are despicable and should be condemned by all. The single difference is that the raptors were inflicting potentially brain-damaging injuries on people, while the vandals were destroying objects.

When the situation degenerates into this level of brutality on one side and hatred on the other, it is only a matter of time until someone is killed.

The blame will lie squarely on Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and her advisers in the Executive Council, none of whom have had the courage to stand up, speak out and resign, as James Tien Pei-chun did in 2003 when 500,000 protesters took to the streets.