LettersHow Hong Kong protests turned dream wedding into a nightmare for policeman’s bride

Since when have close family members and friends of police officers become responsible for flaws in police tactics and deployments? Would there actually be grins of schadenfreude on the faces of individuals who hate the police?

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A protester walks past graffiti depicting a police officer as a dog, and with slogans including “Hongkongers resist” and “Death to all Chinese Communist families”, at Polytechnic University in Hung Hom on November 20. Photo: AP

Published: 5:00am, 23 Nov 2019Updated: 10:58am, 23 Nov 2019

This is a story told by someone at the other end of the spectrum in the recent civil unrest; a sad story or a by-product of our government’s policy failure and subsequent inaction.

Katie and her fiancé got engaged in late 2018. The couple had been looking forward to their wedding ceremony in a banquet hall in Kowloon earlier this week. Katie is a flight attendant with one of the major airlines in Hong Kong, and her now-husband is a police officer.

The pair have maintained low profiles in real life and on social media since the movement took off in June, as they both consider themselves to be rather neutral on the matter. Katie’s husband works for a policy unit of the Police Force, and has not been sent to the front line to handle the protests and riots.

In recent months, what appeared to be political vetting on a miniature scale broke out at Katie’s company. Employees in all positions began digging up information (largely by illegal and unorthodox means) about colleagues in romantic partnerships with police officers. Katie and her husband soon became targets of doxxing on social media and messaging apps among her colleagues.

Their photographs, residential address, phone numbers and so on were uploaded to Telegram, along with fabricated or unverifiable accusations against them. Needless to say, the pressure was immense, since Katie already had enough on her plate, what with wedding planning and the couple’s demanding shifts.

The couple contemplated cancelling their wedding banquet but eventually decided to go ahead with it, as they could not afford losing all the non-refundable deposits, which had drained a significant portion of their savings.