-
Advertisement
Hong Kong police
OpinionLetters

Letters | Capitol Police officer’s clean chit a reminder of double standards on Hong Kong

  • Readers discuss police violence, the UN Security Council resolution on Afghanistan, pandemic lockdowns, the Gay Games and same-sex marriage

Reading Time:4 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
2
Smoke fills the walkway outside the Senate Chamber as rioters are confronted by US Capitol Police officers in Washington on January 6, 2021. Photo: AP
Letters
On August 23, US Capitol Police said they had cleared the lieutenant who shot dead a rioter during the January 6 storming of the Capitol building in Washington after an extensive investigation into whether he had done so unlawfully.

In April, the Justice Department said it would not pursue charges against the officer who fired his gun through the door leading to the House of Representatives chamber. The shot killed a woman who was among a crowd of people trying to breach the barricade erected because people were battering and shoving the doors.

I will remind readers that the rioters in this instance had smashed some windows of the entrance doors to the Speaker’s Lobby, but no fire bombs were thrown and neither were guns fired at those inside. The mob used sticks and other available hard objects to batter the doors, but there was no incontrovertible evidence that the shot fired by the officer was because any person on the inside of the building was in immediate danger of being killed or seriously injured.
Advertisement

The legal justification was based on the premise that had the mob succeeded in entering the building at that moment, the Congress members inside the building, who were being evacuated at the time, might have been endangered.

All told, five people died in connection with that mob incident in Washington. This is in a democratic country whose presidents keep lecturing China on needing to adhere to our shared human rights values and the “rules-based international order”.

Advertisement

Contrast this with the situation which Hong Kong police faced here during the recent turmoil in 2019 and 2020. Members of our police force were being assailed by crowds who threw petrol bombs and attacked officers and members of the public with steel rods and bricks. On the occasions when police officers did use their firearms, they did so because officers were under serious personal assault endangering their lives, and yet police still killed nobody.

Advertisement
Select Voice
Select Speed
1.00x