Occupy Central

Hong Kong: How the Police Trained for Riots

The violence in Hong Kong in recent weeks has led to fears that Beijing is gearing up for a crackdown against the protesters.

Hong Kong’s controversial extradition bill, the catalyst for three months of protests, was officially withdrawn on September 3 by Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s beleaguered chief executive. Its withdrawal was a key demand of protesters, concerned it could lead to extraditions to mainland China.

But in her recorded television address, Lam refused to give way on the protesters’ other demands – notably for an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality. However, she did appoint two new members to the government’s Independent Police Complaints Council panel which is currently investigating the violence.

The violence in Hong Kong in recent weeks has led to fears that Beijing is gearing up for a crackdown against the protesters. Direct intervention by Chinese forces is permitted under the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s “mini-constitution”, if Hong Kong declares a state of emergency – which it hasn’t yet done. The garrison of China’s People’s Liberation Army stationed in central Hong Kong was recently reinforced and the People’s Armed Police has been seen massing and drilling just over the border in Shenzhen. This lends credence to what the protestors see as a “last stand” to save the city they call home.

Also read: Hong Kong Protesters Call on Trump to ‘Liberate’ City

Hong Kongers are used to a home where the rule of law, rather than the law of the ruler, prevails. This is a legacy of riots in 1956, 1966 and 1967, when the Hong Kong police force adopted an increasingly paramilitary character.

Following the 1967 riots, however, the rule of law, human rights and liberalism became the touchstone of government legitimacy. From the 1970s onwards, it engaged in a swathe of welfare, educational, and legal reforms designed to rebuild links with the community and trust in the police. As I’ve outlined in my own research, the strategy worked. Hong Kong came to be regarded as a stable, peaceful, prosperous and orderly society, its 30,000-strong police force a trusted and friendly guardian.

Ready for riots

Behind the scenes, however, the police force strengthened its anti-riot capability. Since 1958, it has invested in a specially trained paramilitary unit, the Police Tactical Unit, based in Fanling – whose training ground was shared with mainland forces just before 1997. Besides such specialist squads, all members of the Hong Kong police are trained to kit-up and be riot-ready within 11 minutes, giving the police an extraordinary force-wide public order capability.

The classified Hong Kong Riot Training Manual – copied by the UK’s Metropolitan Police and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police – sets out the sequence of public order policing. Traditionally, tear gas has been the weapon of first choice, the intention being to encourage the crowd to disperse along routes deliberately left open by the police. A visual and audible warning is given in Chinese and English. In order to prevent individual officers from being captured by the crowd, going into the crowd to effect an arrest was discouraged. Regular riot training instilled such practices across the entire force.

But the 2019 protests have taken the police response to another level. Though China blames “foreign forces” for fomenting the 2019 protests, they are grounded in domestic issues. A wiser government might have adopted a more hands-off approach from the start, but instead, the government deployed the police in paramilitary formation, using tear gas, water cannon, rubber bullets, and pepper spray to deter the demonstrators.

Also read: Hong Kong: Ahead of Planned Protests, Police in Position at Airport

Predictably, this hasn’t worked: a cycle of protest, repression and further protest developed. The return to a hardline approach stems from police handling of the 2014 mass protest known as the Occupy Central or Umbrella Movement. Under pressure to end weeks of peaceful protest, the then-commissioner of police, Andy Tsang Wai-hung, and his deputy, Alan Lau, sanctioned the use of tear gas against the protesters. Hong Kong was in shock. A generation brought up to respect the police could not believe that “their” police force was now using such repressive tactics against them.

Nicknamed the “vulture”, Tsang already had a reputation as a hardliner. Said to be held in high regard within the police force, he nevertheless became a highly divisive figure. His retirement in 2015 was an opportunity for the government to appoint a more conciliatory police commissioner, Stephen Lo, to heal the divisions between police and society.

But in an unprecedented move, the force brought Tsang’s former deputy Lau out of retirement on a temporary contract specifically to handle the 2019 protests. Lau has continued Tsang’s “gloves off” approach.

As a force with its origins in colonial days, the Hong Kong police is an arm of the state: individual officers have no individual constabulary power. They must obey orders even when they think they are unjustified. In 2019, this has meant obeying orders to fire tear gas while deliberately blocking routes of dispersal. They have also fired tear gas in closed or confined spaces, contrary to international standards which only permit its use in open spaces.

Police have also fired rubber bullets at close range, and gone into crowds with batons raised. In two incidents, officers have fired live ammunition in the air as warning shots. A special unit – the “raptor squad” – has been designated to work undercover to target high-profile activists and detain them at a special detention centre at San Uk Ling, near the mainland border.

The capture of police violence on mobile phone video and social media has not reined in the violence. Instead, the fact that the police are prepared to be filmed using such brutal tactics shows they understand they are immune from redress.

Hong Kong commuters were caught up in police violence after riot police moved into a subway car to detain suspected protesters. Read the latest on the protests: https://t.co/wk8kAnmdfE pic.twitter.com/qsV0EMi9aX

— Reuters Top News (@Reuters) September 1, 2019

Hard to regain trust

However, the protesters remain resilient and undeterred. They too have learned lessons from 2014 – they are leaderless by design, both to prevent the police picking off the movement’s leaders and any falling out among different factions. They regularly outwit the police with their “like water” approach, inspired by Bruce Lee, dissolving away before the police arrive only to pop-up unexpectedly elsewhere. Their ingenuity and creativity have captured the public’s imagination.

Also read: What Makes Srinagar the World’s New ‘Forbidden City’

The government’s repressive approach, by contrast, is backfiring. Many who might otherwise stay at home have been so angered by the government’s policing tactics that they too now come out in protest. They scan all walks of life, from housewives to lawyers, accountants and businesspeople, and school and university students – and their orderly conduct undermines Beijing’s depiction of them as a violent, radical mob.

Frontline police officers not only face fatigue but doubts about the wisdom of exposing their families to public antagonism, as they continue to follow orders to fire tear gas into crowds which may contain neighbours, friends and relatives. The trust in police and rulers painstakingly built up in the aftermath of 1967 is being undone, and it is hard to see how it can be regained.

Carol Anne Goodwin Jones, Reader, Birmingham Law School, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Can the Fruits of Democracy Survive in Hong Kong?

In recent months, the flimsy foundations of Hong Kong’s autonomy have been exposed by a series of dramas.

Demonstrators protest against what they call is Beijing’s interference over local politics and the rule of law, a day before China’s parliament is expected to announce their interpretation of the Basic Law in light of two pro-independence lawmakers’ oath-taking controversy in Hong Kong November 6, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Tyrone Siu

On the eve of Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty, Rem Koolhaas, architectural arbiter of 1990s neoliberal decadence, dubbed Hong Kong a quintessential “generic city” celebrated for its political blankness.

Today, this vision is being undone by the furious political winds that have blasted the city since the fall of 2014, when simmering economic and political tensions erupted during the Occupy Central uprising.

Movement co-founder Benny Tai was right: with a finger firmly placed on Hong Kong’s political pulse, he predicted at the time that Beijing’s actions would stir up a new “era of resistance” within the territory.

Constitutional doubts are mounting. Since the handover of the former British colony to China almost 20 years ago, Hong Kong’s status within China’s sovereignty nexus was supposed to have been assured under the “one country, two systems” framework laid out by Deng Xiaoping in Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law. Deng’s vision granted Beijing sovereignty over the territory while allowing the city to retain a high degree of autonomy.

China’s sovereignty over Hong Kong is now moot. In recent months, the flimsy foundations of its autonomy have been exposed by a series of dramas.

The heavy-handed attempts by Beijing to erode academic freedom at Hong Kong’s most prestigious universities is an example. So, too, is the rapid deterioration of press freedom in a once-boisterous media scene. The case of booksellers who were “disappeared” earlier this year equally raised the spectre of extra-territorial kidnapping by Beijing’s security apparatus, accompanied by whispers of its covert operations on Hong Kong’s soil.

Political instability is spreading. Beijing, in an extraordinary move, recently barred two pro-independence lawmakers from taking their seats in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, a display of political might that further undermines the foundations of the territory’s independent judiciary.

A business class that’s on Beijing’s side

Two people particularly well versed in Hong Kong’s political affairs are Anson Chan, the first woman to be appointed to the role of chief secretary in the territory, and Martin Lee, regarded as the father of Hong Kong’s democracy movement.

Key public figures in Hong Kong, Chan and Lee recently toured Australia and New Zealand, where they urged the region to stand by the territory in its fight for democracy.

During their short time in Sydney, they agreed to a sit-down with me at a popular Chinatown restaurant.

Over bowls of soup and pots of jasmine tea, Chan and Lee explained their political visions and voiced their anxieties about the present state of the territory, and its decaying relationship with the Chinese mainland.

Chan and Lee told me that the delicate balance within the “one country, two systems” is now tilting in Beijing’s favour. The swing is partly due, Chan said, to Hong Kong’s “disappointing” economic “levelling down” since 1997, certainly compared to China’s skyrocketing growth into the financial stratosphere. Hong Kong is slowly but surely being absorbed into China’s economic orbit.

When I pressed them about the political implications of this growing dependency, Lee noted the disquieting rise of a business class in Hong Kong that is “100%” on Beijing’s side. It confirms the spectacular success over the past 30 years of Beijing’s strategy of encouraging Hong Kong’s business class to invest in mainland enterprises, so that in due course they became “financially and economically dependent on China”.

Anson Chan and Martin Lee believe the ‘one country, two systems’ framework is now tilting in Beijing’s favour. Credit: Lindy Baker/SDN 2016

“Money talks loudest,” he continued, lamenting that Hong Kong is being tucked snugly in Beijing’s pocket. Lee pointed out that Beijing’s economic calculations are not limited just to Hong Kong. He noted how the hands of China, in its bid for global influence fuelled by a relentless appetite for “money, money, money”, are “spreading to all five continents”. Lee told me that he nevertheless questions the sustainability of the “China model”, especially when it is measured in power terms.

As our conversation unfolded, it struck me that Lee’s vision of democracy as the twin of capitalism bears more than a passing resemblance to the teleology of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history”. Why is the model of capitalist democracy necessarily a cure for the world’s ills and why will it in the end reign supreme?

Doesn’t Beijing’s political path defy this logic, I asked? Lee remained adamant.

“If you want capitalism,” he said, “you need the rest, including freedom of speech, the whole thing that comes in the package.”

China’s economic and political power model may well prove more resilient and powerful than Lee and Chan think.

Shortly after we met in Sydney, proof of Beijing’s far-reaching economic muscle came during Chan and Lee’s visit to neighbouring New Zealand, when their meeting with deputy prime minister Bill English was abruptly cancelled, purportedly due to the “diplomatically sensitive” nature of their visit.

Political volatility

During our remaining time together, Chan emphasised that she places her bets on Deng Xiaoping’s blueprint as the best path forward for Hong Kong politically. She said that if Beijing will “get back to one country, two systems [and] allow us to have one man, one vote”, then the formula will demonstrate to China that “the system works”, so safeguarding Hong Kong from future encroachments.

Stress tests of that position are now happening fast. Political schisms in Hong Kong are growing. In recent weeks, even in the normally staid parliament, striking scenes have emerged of fiery pro-independence legislators hurling derogatory slurs and staging feisty protests in the direction of the mainland. The rise of a more contentious strand of politics in the territory highlights the precarious political reality of Hong Kong in light of Beijing’s recent predatory air.

The grim truth is that the territory’s Legislative Council is now teetering on the edge of paralysis and facing a political showdown among its factions. Nothing less than the Legislative Council’s institutional authority hangs in the balance.

Not only that, but Hong Kong’s current chief executive, C.Y. Leung, is widely scorned as a Beijing stooge. His meek acquiescence to his sovereign overlords is similarly corroding the authority of the territory’s highest office.

The shadowy presence of Beijing’s liaison office looms ever larger over Hong Kong’s independent affairs.

Beijing’s patience with local calls for Hong Kong’s independence also appears to be growing thin. Recently, the Chinese government’s Hong Kong and Macau affairs office voiced their open support for the legal punishment of “Hong Kong independence activities”.

Legislators Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung meet journalists after the court disqualified them from taking office. Credit: Bobby Yip/Reuters

Heightened speculation that further institutional deterioration within the territory might risk action by Beijing recently became a reality with the case of the two young lawmakers who were barred from Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, despite demonstrations in the streets to support them.

The fruits of democracy

Considering the enormous pressure generated by these present-day trends, I asked Chan and Lee if any bright spots remain in Hong Kong’s rapidly shrinking autonomous sphere.

Chan replied that the territory remains an indispensable conduit to global markets. Its gateway role necessitates the free flow of digital information across borders. This factor, she explained, was, and remains, the key to Hong Kong’s past and future success as both a domestic and international platform for global capital.

“Precisely because no Chinese city” can offer Beijing what Hong Kong can, she told me, Beijing has to tread lightly in any future crackdowns. Chan’s thinking echoes public statements made by Zhang Dejiang, National People’s Congress chairman, who in recent months has spoken soothingly of Hong Kong’s unique business advantages and the way they remain unduplicated by other Chinese cities.

It may be that Chan is right. Perhaps Hong Kong will retain its strategic advantages: the rule of law, unrestricted flows of information and connectivity with the rest of the world that remains second to none. Yet Hong Kong’s fierce rival Shanghai currently jockeys to supplant the territory as China’s pre-eminent financial centre.

And Hong Kong’s formerly raucous digital media landscape is being brought to heel by the snapping up of assets by mainland tycoons. Its once-vaunted press freedom has swiftly tumbled down the ranking list of Freedom House in recent annual reports.

Facebook and Google are meanwhile rumoured to be positioning themselves to enter the lucrative Chinese market. Things seem hopeless. But are they?

Multinationals may well find censored flows of information on the Chinese mainland unproblematic to their business models, but Chan’s and Lee’s defiance is striking.

As we prepared to say goodbye, the pair made clear their dogged defence of the promises laid out in the Basic Law. Lee had the last word. The territory remains a rare terrain in China, he said. It currently enjoys no free and fair elections. The rule of law is under attack. So is its vibrant civil society.

Yet Hong Kong still has something the mainland doesn’t. It has “the fruits of democracy without the tree of democracy”. That’s why, in spite of everything, Hong Kong citizens and representatives would press on against a regime where the tree of democracy remains “non-existent”.

Stephenie Andal is a PhD candidate in government and international relations, Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

This article is part of the Democracy Futures series, a joint global initiative between The Conversation and the Sydney Democracy Network. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century.

China Casts Hong Kong Teen as US-Backed Pro-Independence Advocate

Joshua Wong, a student leader who rose to fame at the age of 15 for forcing the Hong Kong government to shelve a pro-China national education scheme in schools, appears in a video released on August 1 by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, with a caption that says “American-led Western power”.

Student leader Joshua Wong looks on before a verdict, on charges of inciting and participating in an illegal assembly in 2014 which led to the “Occupy Central” pro-democracy movement, outside a court in Hong Kong July 21, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Bobby Yip

Hong Kong: China‘s top prosecution body has cast a thin, bespectacled teenage activist from Hong Kong as a pro-independence advocate backed by the US in an online video that warns against uprising movements across the country.

Joshua Wong, a student leader who rose to fame at the age of 15 for forcing the Hong Kong government to shelve a pro-China national education scheme in schools, appears in a video with a caption that says “American-led Western power“.

The video, released on August 1 by the Supreme People’s Procuratorate via its official Weibo account, depicts harrowing images of refugees from Central Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe dying or in horrific conditions. The video then contrasts this with pictures of a strong and stable China.

Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang, are singled out, as are dissident activists who are “damaging China‘s internal stability and harmony by hook or by crook. Behind all these incidents, we can often catch a glimpse of the dark shadow of the Stars and Stripes,” the video states.

Wong, now 19, said on his Facebook page that he viewed the video statements as a joke and had not advocated for Hong Kong independence.

The democracy activist was found guilty by a Hong Kong court on July 21 for unlawful assembly related to demonstrations that paralysed key arteries of the Chinese-ruled city in 2014.

The 79-day “Occupy Central” street demonstrations crippled parts of Hong Kong and were one of the boldest populist challenges to Beijing’s Communist Party leaders in decades.

Hong Kong is technically part of China but governed by separate laws under a “one country, two systems” framework agreed with the British when it was handed back from colonial rule in 1997.

Relations between the two have frayed in the year and a half since the end of the protests.

The video ends with a message warning watchers to “Protect China, be cautious against colour revolutions.”

Student Activists Found Guilty of Protest-Related Charges in Hong Kong

Amnesty International Hong Kong director Mabel Au stated that the charges were vague and could be politically motivated.

Student leaders (L-R) Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow pose before a verdict, on charges of inciting and participating in an illegal assembly in 2014 which led to the “Occupy Central” pro-democracy movement, outside a court in Hong Kong July 21, 2016. Credit: Reuters/Bobby Yip

Hong Kong: A Hong Kong court on Thursday found bespectacled teenage democracy activist Joshua Wong guilty of unlawful assembly related to demonstrations that paralysed key arteries of the Chinese-ruled city in 2014.

Wong, 19, was acquitted of inciting others to join a rally that kicked off pro-democracy protests a year and a half ago, when activists scaled a fence in front of a government building complex.

“No matter what the price we need to pay, we will still continue to fight against suppression from the government,” Wong, who rose to fame at age 15 for forcing the Hong Kong government to shelve a pro-China national education scheme in schools, told reporters.

The 79-day “Occupy Central” street demonstrations crippled parts of Hong Kong and were one of the boldest populist challenges to Beijing’s Communist Party leaders in decades.

Two other student leaders were also charged in connection with the rally. Alex Chow was found guilty of unlawful assembly and Nathan Law was found guilty of inciting others to join. The men said they had not yet decided whether they would appeal.

Before she announced the charges, magistrate June Cheung Tin-ngan acknowledged that the case was politically sensitive but said the court would not be influenced and was “absolutely not the place to solve political or societal problems”.

Amnesty International Hong Kong director Mabel Au released a statement calling the charges vague and saying they smacked of political payback by the authorities.

Sentencing will be on August 15.

Hong Kong is technically part of China but governed by separate laws under a “one country, two systems” framework agreed with the British when it was handed back from colonial rule in 1997.

Relations between the two have frayed in the year and a half since the end of the protests.

At the time, police used tear gas, pepper spray and batons to deter the activists who were demanding – but ultimately failed to obtain – open nominations in the city’s next chief executive election.

The charges against the student activists have been seen as a potential flashpoint that could anger more radical protesters or turn the students into political martyrs at a time of increasing friction between the financial hub and Beijing.

There were no immediate protests outside the court but another student activist, Billy Fung, was arrested on Wednesday night for criminal intimidation, disorderly conduct in a public space, criminal damage and attempted forcible entry in connection with disrupting a Hong Kong University council meeting in January, police said.

Fung and others believed there had been political interference in the appointment of the new council chairman.

Last week, the Hong Kong government and the Electoral Affairs Commission sparked anger when they said candidates for September’s Legislative Council elections – who this year include pro-democracy and independence activists – must sign a declaration that Hong Kong is an “inalienable” part of China and that advocating and promoting independence could render them ineligible.

(Reuters)

Hong Kong Bookseller’s Disappearance “Unfortunate”, Says Chinese Official

The controversy has exacerbated social tensions between Hong Kong and China, fuelling a fledgling independence movement among pockets of the city’s increasingly restive youth.

Hong Kong: A senior Hong Kong-based Chinese official said on Tuesday that the disappearance of a Hong Kong bookseller was a “very unfortunate incident” that shouldn’t be repeated, without clarifying details of the case.

Asked about the suspected abduction in December of British national Lee Bo from the Chinese-controlled financial hub, Wang Zhenmin, the head of the law department at Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong, said he was happy Lee had since returned to the city and was living a “normal life”.

“No one wants to see this kind of case happen in Hong Kong. No one wants to see it happen again in future,” told the Foreign Correspondents’ Club.

His remarks were the most detailed yet from a Chinese official after the disappearances of Lee and four other booksellers who produced and sold gossipy books critical of Chinese leaders.

But Wang said he didn’t know the facts of the case and declined to comment when asked by Reuters whether Chinese authorities had abducted Lee.

The incident has rocked the freewheeling city and sparked local and international concern that Beijing was using shadowy tactics to undermine core freedoms guaranteed to the former British colony when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.

Last week, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said his government had evidence that Lee was “removed from Hong Kong under duress”.

Wang said China would uphold its policy of respecting Hong Kong’s autonomy under the “one country, two systems” formula by which Britain handed Hong Kong back China, adding China would “honour our commitments to Hong Kong society”.

Lee surfaced in China in late February and has since made several visits to Hong Kong, denying in interviews that he was kidnapped by Chinese authorities as many in Hong Kong still believe.

Hong Kong’s freedoms are protected by the Basic Law, a mini-constitution that includes the “inviolable” freedom of Hong Kong people from arbitrary arrest and search.

Hong Kong authorities are still waiting for detailed explanations from China regarding the booksellers and how Lee was able to cross into China from Hong Kong without his travel documents, including a British passport.

The controversy has exacerbated social tensions between Hong Kong and China, fuelling a fledgling independence movement among pockets of the city’s increasingly restive youth including those who took part in the 79-day “Occupy Central” democracy street protests in late 2014.

Wang urged Hong Kong residents to respect the laws of Hong Kong and China.

“(They) shouldn’t do anything harmful to Chinese national security under the interests of the entire Chinese people, including our Hong Kong residents,” he said.

Wang also said that young people advocating independence could test the limits of Hong Kong’s vaunted freedom of speech. “I don’t believe they can achieve Hong Kong independence … but in the process … they will cause a lot of conflict,” he said.

(Reuters)