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LettersUK group’s inquiry into Hong Kong police conduct during protests suits its bias
- The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong does not aim to investigate the overall violence
- Its narrow focus and friendliness with anti-China groups raise questions about its impartiality
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As we all know, Hong Kong suffered unprecedented violence and disruption in the second half of 2019. It was unpleasant and frightening for many – peaceful demonstrators, innocent bystanders, shop and restaurant workers, and others whose livelihoods, if not their lives, were endangered.
For the police too, it must also have been an unwelcome experience, exacerbated by the attacks with stones and petrol bombs on the compounds housing their wives and children.
The miracle was that there were so very few deaths, such as that of a bystander hit by a brick during a fracas, and none actually killed by direct action of the police or protesters (despite the protesters trying to ignite a man for holding the “wrong” political views).
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Contrast this with the similar demonstrations in late 2019 in Iraq, Iran and Chile, where in a matter of weeks scores of people died. One might say that the violence in those countries was brutal, whereas in Hong Kong it was more muted.
In this context, it is deeply unsatisfactory that a group called the “All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong” (APPG), affiliated to the UK Parliament but with no official status within Parliament, has chosen to mount an investigation, not into the overall violence, but into the narrow issues of “police tactics in relation to those providing humanitarian aid to protesters” and whether the “police in their treatment of humanitarian aid workers … have broken international human rights law”.
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The APPG is a self-confessed pressure group friendly with the overtly “pro-democracy”/anti-China group, Stand with Hong Kong. According to APPG co-chair Natalie Bennett, the inquiry is a “vehicle for action on human rights and democracy in Hong Kong”.
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