Letters | Why violent Hong Kong protests don’t stand to reason: look in the Basic Law

Hong Kong protests

Letters

Published: 8:00am, 29 Dec 2019

Why you can trust SCMP

What are the costs and benefits of the current protests in Hong Kong?

The costs are clear: billions of dollars in shop closures, unemployment, reduced visitor numbers, starved charities.

But what are the upsides? What are the benefits of the protests? Surely there are some?

So far, I can think of only one. The extradition bill was withdrawn shortly after the first protests. Conclusion: (a) the protests were effective and (b) the government was responsive.

But protests continued. Have they gained any more upside?

Well, now it’s “five demands” – not just one.

Three of these extra demands are only because of the protests. Not because they are causes fought for.

These are the “self-centred demands”:

1. Stop calling us “rioters”.

2. Give us all amnesty, and …

3. Investigate the police (but not us!)

However:

1. You can’t stop calling rioters “rioters” if in fact they are, well, rioters. It does violence to language to demand otherwise.

2. The second demand does violence to the rule of law, which the protesters claim to champion. How can we give blanket amnesty to people who have killed bystanders and set people on fire?

3. Investigate the police – but don’t investigate any of the wanton vandalism of the protesters? This one does violence to the concept of fairness.

That leaves only the last “demand”, which is for universal suffrage. But trying to achieve this by violent protest is doomed to failure. Thinking otherwise is delusional.

Who are violent Hong Kong protesters hurting? It’s not Beijing

Universal suffrage is not a “promise” is being broken by Beijing (as is so often claimed). The Basic Law makes it clear: The Chief Executive is to be selected by “election or through consultations held locally” and “the method … shall be specified in the light of the actual situation” in Hong Kong. No promise there.

And the “actual situation” has clearly moved against it.

What this means is that what has been achieved by the protests and what will be achieved is: zero.

An essentially nativist and populist movement has been romanticised to being “pro-democracy”. It is not.

It’s past time we faced reality: the protests are hugely costly without a single benefit. They must stop.

Perhaps then we can get back to the “actual situation”, allowing discussion of how to proceed with universal suffrage.

Peter Forsythe, Discovery Bay

Police officers in Santa hats outside a soccer stadium before a Premier League match, in Bournemouth, UK, on December 21. Photo: Reuters

Police need to see the funny side of things

There was a photo on the back page of your December 24 edition which highlighted, to me at least, one of the major problems with the Hong Kong police.

The photograph was of a British policeman with a Santa hat on top of his helmet. I have witnessed police crowd control in Hong Kong on numerous occasions and one feature which stands out is the refusal of police to communicate with the crowd, whereas in the UK, New Zealand and, I am sure, many other countries – one of the first things the police would do is to chat to the crowd to develop a rapport.

The photograph showed that the British police have a sense of humour, something sadly lacking here with both the police and our politicians.

A bit of humour and a sense of fun do not cause the public to lose respect in authority, quite the contrary.

Andy Statham, Happy Valley

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