Then & Now | Torture claims by Occupy protestors are a little far-fetched

A number of those arrested and taken off to the Police Training School, near Aberdeen, during the Occupy disturbances of 2014 loudly complained, on their eventual release, that they’d had to wait some hours before they could use the toilets, or even being given something to eat. It was evidence, they alleged, of extreme ill treatment and a shocking infringement of their civil liberties by the police.

Now, of course, nobody likes to hold their water any longer than necessary, but sitting on a full bladder for a few hours hardly counts as torture, even if it feels like it at the time.

Most demonstrators who choose to wave the colonial-era flag and loudly proclaim how much better Hong Kong was in the old days are too young to even remember the sight of the Union Jack fluttering over Government House, unless they were picked up in a parent’s arms and had it specifically pointed out to them. Even fewer “nativists” have any personal recollection of some of the less-good aspects of “the good old days”.

While not routine in Hong Kong (as it was in other parts of the British empire: in Kenya, during the Mau-Mau insurgency, for instance, and during the Malayan Emergency, in the 1950s) torture did happen from time to time. And what forms did this take, in particular during the 1967 riots?

White noise and sleep deprivation were the usual means deployed to make political detainees crack psychologically. Others had pins stuck under their fingernails while being interrogated; not life threatening, but very painful. Various other forms of coercive “questioning” were deployed from time to time.