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Letters | When Hong Kong police dehumanise protesters as ‘cockroaches’ and ‘objects’, the results can only be brutal
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Why you can trust SCMP
In August, Hong Kong’s Junior Police Officers’ Association released an official statement denouncing protesters as “cockroaches”. Their antagonistic sentiment towards protesters alarmed me at the time. But earlier this week, I was stunned by the rhetoric of the police spokesman who described a man whose limbs had been bound as a “yellow object” (“Video showing police kicking man ‘doctored’”, September 24). It is evident that dehumanisation narratives have affected their judgment.
Since July, with the help of Beijing’s propaganda machine on WeChat and Weibo, Communist Party supporters both on the mainland and in Hong Kong have been using the term “cockroaches” and other derogatory words to refer to Hong Kong protesters.
What they do not realise (or choose not to) is that the dehumanisation is not only deepening the hatred and misunderstanding between mainlanders and Hongkongers, but also inciting the police to use physical and verbal violence against civilians.
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The Hong Kong Police Force is the sole law enforcement agency in the city, if we rule out the Hong Kong-based People’s Liberation Army garrison. Officers are legally equipped with lethal weapons. The fact that they characterise protesters as inanimate objects, or even pests, therefore terrifies me.
How can we trust them to safeguard our lives and property regardless of political differences, when on numerous occasions police officers have been reported, and recorded, to be extrajudicially abusing or assaulting protesters and detainees? The Hong Kong police should be reminded that law enforcement does not mean you can justify the use of excessive force against protesters.
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