A man was sprayed with pepper spray point blank after asking where police's cordon line was pic.twitter.com/9sOQhzJdqB
— Chris Lau (@hkchrislau) October 31, 2019
Source:
https://scmp.com/comment/letters/article/3039690/what-drives-hong-kong-police-brutality-against-protesters-freud-may Letters
What drives Hong Kong police brutality against protesters? Freud may have the answer
- Freud’s theory would suggest that, with their identities concealed by masks and heavy gear, police officers feel free to let their “id” run riot in dealing with protesters and crowds
A riot police officer faces off with people taking photographs in Wong Tai Sin after protesters set up roadblocks in the area on November 11. Photo: Winson Wong
What would happen to a city if politics is placed above the law? What actions could civilians take if police power is not controlled?
Hong Kong’s political crisis, which is now in its sixth month, has shown that the answer to these questions is perpetual turmoil and distrust of the government, resulting in the withdrawal of investments and emigration.
Many people, in Hong Kong and overseas, have been horrified by watching protesters being subjected to police brutality. Although representatives of the police force in their daily press conferences clarify that what they do to protesters is righteous, only a few people accept their explanations. Even reporters have been treated in an unfriendly way by the police.
Why do the police inadvertently or deliberately use excessive force against innocents and violent protesters, regardless of public opinion? We might find the answer in the Freudian theory of the psyche. According to Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, of the three parts to the mind, the “id” is the drive that operates on the pleasure principle, seeking to avoid states of tension or displeasure while the “superego” is the force of social and moral norms. The “ego” seeks to balance the needs of both the id and the superego.
Adults who are very selfish or impulsive may be unable to unwilling to suppress the id. Information from the outside world is essential for the id because otherwise the psyche would be destroyed in its blind pursuit of selfish satisfaction.
Hong Kong’s riot police officers are covered head-to-toe in heavy gear and have been allowed to wear masks, even with an anti-mask law in force, and to prevent their identities from being revealed. This might have encouraged their audacious suppression of the protesters.
Accountable to nobody, the police then unconsciously or instinctively neglect the outer world and seek their own pleasure. Hong Kong is in danger of becoming a city controlled by police unbounded by the rule of law. The government must no longer let this happen, or the city will be set on a path of no return.
Barnaby Ieong, Macau
Hong Kong still needs a commission of inquiry
On November 26, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor said that, as the United Kingdom did after the 2011 Tottenham riots, the Hong Kong government is planning to set up an independent review committee to look at the causes of the social unrest and “identify the underlying problems, social, economic, or even political and make recommendations”.
The UK Riots Communities and Victims Panel of 2011 comprised a group of four community leaders with public service backgrounds. They visited the areas where riots occurred, received 340 written responses, conducted a 1,200-person neighbourhood survey and published a 148-page report. It was a purely grass-roots exercise to listen to the experiences of those in communities affected by the riots and disorder.
That panel had no statutory powers of investigation, could not compel people to speak to it and provided no protection from prosecution for people who gave evidence.
The report and recommendations of a review committee like this could be informative, but it is not a substitute for a formal commission of inquiry.
Eliot Fisk, Mid-Levels