Although circumstances surrounding 22-year-old university student Chow Tsz-lok’s fall at a Tseung Kwan O car park on November 4 are still unclear, there had always been a sense of inevitability that a tragedy of this nature would take place after five months of unrest in Hong Kong.
As Hongkongers mourn the death of someone so young, we must also mourn what our city has become. While Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and her team of political yes-men emphasise the impact of the protests on our city’s economy, tout President Xi Jinping’s continued support for her administration and condemn protesters as the “enemy of the people”, the ugliness of our government and police force is on full display.
We have a police force that includes a frontline officer who would open a bottle of champagne to celebrate Chow’s death. This is the same police force that has on more than one occasion treated fire and ambulance services with disdain.
After tearfully telling Hongkongers of her motherly sacrifices for Hong Kong in a live televised interview on June 12, and consoling a vandalised MTR turnstile the day following the September 8 march where protesters implored the United States Congress to pass its Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, Lam has not visited any of the injured protesters – or Chow’s bereaved family – and remains completely unmoved by Hongkongers’ demands for government and police accountability, as well as universal suffrage.
Instead of measures that might help calm Hongkongers’ anger after Chow’s death, we have seen an upsurge of police violence. In the morning of November 11, a traffic police officer, unencumbered by any self-restraint, fired, without warning, live rounds at unarmed protesters at close range, critically wounding one.
Meanwhile, three pro-democracy legislators were arrestedon November 9, the day after Chow died, with another four told they would be arrested for interfering with a Legislative Council committee meeting on May 11 on Lam’s extradition bill that plunged our city into the abyss. A number of pro-democracy candidates for the district council elections on November 24 have also been arrested for a range of offences.
Our universities are no longer battlegrounds where people with different beliefs fight with ideas. The police, protesters and students now resort to violence on university campuses, some resembling war zones.
University administrators and academics, fearing their career prospects might be undermined, continue to be largely silent over government and police actions beyond uttering platitudes. Our universities’ places on international rankings belie their failures and complicity in Hong Kong’s worst post-war catastrophe. Sun Yat-sen would turn in his grave at what his alma mater has become.
The current and former vice-chancellors of Chinese University at last tried to speak up for their students in the evening of November 12 in a stand-off reminiscent of the Balkans in the 1990s. Police response: firing tear gas in the current vice-chancellor’s close vicinity. As the saying goes, one is not a Hongkonger if one hasn’t inhaled tear gas.
The independence of our judiciary, the greatest hallmark that distinguishes Hong Kong from mainland China, is guaranteed under Articles 2, 19 and 85 of the Hong Kong Basic Law. Yet Beijing has admonished our judges to take “common responsibility” with the executive and legislative branches to uphold law and order.
The message from the north is clear: judges must impose the severest sentences on protesters, and grant any injunctions the government and police desire. Such “common responsibility” is compulsory in a country where judges follow party edicts, not in a city where they check and balance abuse of public powers, and hold the government and police accountable.
Amid the chaos across Hong Kong, all that Lam could muster to tell us was that her administration would not yield to protesters’ violent actions, and the Independent Police Complaints Council was well-placed to look into any complaints the public might bring against the police. Even the panel of international experts whom Lam appointed in September to advise the council disagrees.
Lam needs reminding that she did not yield after a million Hongkongers took to the street peacefully on June 9 to demand that her administration listen and withdraw her extradition bill. Lam is the fuel that literally keeps Hong Kong burning.
An anti-government protester walks past a burning vehicle during a protest in Tseung Kwan O on November 11. Photo: Reuters
One does wonder if increased police violence and arrests of pro-democracy legislators and electoral candidates have been intended to fan the flames and pave the way for the district council elections to be postponed, if not cancelled altogether. The elections are extremely important for at least three reasons.
First, they represent the first opportunity for Hongkongers to voice our opinions in the ballot box since the extradition bill saga.
Second, elected members of councils for Hong Kong’s 18 districts nominate and vote on five of the 35 functional constituency members in the Legislative Council otherwise returned by restricted franchise.
Third, and most significantly, 117 members of the 1,200-member Election Committee, which selects Hong Kong’s chief executive, are drawn from elected district council members, and they might be able collectively to prevent a candidate favoured by Beijing from reaching a majority.
Without shame, politicians from pro-establishment parties, expecting to face huge losses, are warning about the prospects of a “constitutional crisis” and floating suggestions that the elections should not take place as scheduled. They seem to have completely forgotten that it is their enabling of Lam that caused and continues the crisis facing Hong Kong. People’s Daily, a mouthpiece for Beijing, has since called “return to peace” a prerequisite to “fair elections”.
Postponing or cancelling the elections will be the final act of betrayal that Lam can commit against Hong Kong and Hongkongers. It is what tin-pot dictators in war-torn African countries do to cling to power. Hong Kong will truly be in ruins and all hell will break loose, from which our city will never recover.
Phil C.W. Chan is senior fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy. He holds law degrees from HKU, Durham and the National University of Singapore, and is author of the book China, State Sovereignty and International Legal Order. Wilson Leung is a practising barrister in Hong Kong, and holds degrees in philosophy and political science from LSE and MIT
