Advertisement
Advertisement
Letters | Hong Kong police: masked thugs or remarkably restrained with violent protesters?
I am writing in response to Ms Helen Lo’s letter (“Do not be blind to violence of police ‘gang’”, November 5). “How can peace be restored when the police continue in this vein?” she asks, and says we should not be blind to their violence.
My response is: how can peace be restored when there is continued violence and vandalism by mobs every weekend in the first instance? The police would like to go home and enjoy time with their families just like every law-abiding citizen. If Ms Lo’s family members or her personal safety and property were in jeopardy, I would like to see how she reacts.
Our Hong Kong Police Force has shown remarkable restraint in the face of violent attacks. If what has occurred on our streets took place in New York City or in the UK, for instance, there would have been far more serious consequences – if not fatal incidents, at least a lot more casualties by now.
Would Ms Lo have any sympathy towards those seriously beaten up for expressing different views and whose property has been vandalised by mobs?
Michael Li, Tsim Sha Tsui
This is what a police state looks like
One need look no further than the police action on Thursday night, roughly and thuggishly busting Halloween festivities at Lan Kwai Fong. There was nothing violent or illegal going on there and the operation was purely to intimidate.
Incidents happen every day that show Hong Kong’s rapid slide into a police state, under the utter incompetence and stubbornness of Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s administration.
Here are two that perfectly illustrate the disgraceful situation:
1. A few nights ago, I saw 15 or so police officers with batons and shields charge into the tunnel under Ferry Street in Jordan, and begin interrogating two students who were simply putting up posters on a Lennon Wall. This was an overkill for an infraction comparable to a parking ticket.
2. There is a video clip on the Post’s Twitter page of a bank employee being pepper-sprayed in the face after being accused of “breaching social peace”, when it is clear he was simply asking where the police cordon was. Anyone who watches this video will understand why the once-respected police force have come to be despised overwhelmingly by the people of Hong Kong.
There is a need for major changes in the senior ranks of the police, not to mention the Security Bureau, if the community’s respect for the police is ever to be restored.
Veronica Yung, Yau Ma Tei
Who were the masked thugs in Lan Kwai Fong?
What a shameful display by the Hong Kong Police Force in Lan Kwai Fong on Halloween night.
They looked like a group of masked thugs, without any forms of identification, threatening the population and blocking access to bars for absolutely no reason.
What was their plan? To prevent rioting? Why would people break things on that specific night any more than on any other night in Lan Kwai Fong?
Ensure an orderly evening? Quite the opposite; their presence was the source of chaos and the cause of greatly reduced business.
Let us call it what it was, an orchestrated provocation.
Heads need to roll in the force management, and each day that passes where Lam refuses to start an independent inquiry is only going to make things worse, and be more evidence of the incompetence of the chief executive and the Executive Council.
J.C. Clement, Jordan
Post