Public Eye | How will justice be seen to be done in wake of Occupy Central protests?

Mass trials, prosecutions targeting just a few, or an amnesty - that is the question. Police have arrested almost 1,000 protesters so far who broke the law in the name of civil disobedience. Another 75 have turned themselves in. Police are hunting for more offenders. Will they be made to face the full force of the law? Public Eye has no idea. Some scaled the security fence of government headquarters in Admiralty, some called on people to storm the HQ, some incited protesters to begin a mass civil disobedience protest, some conspired to plot such a protest, and some used metal barricades to charge police lines. Should the book be thrown at them or should they be let off the hook for the sake of political expediency? The three initiators of Occupy Central who surrendered themselves will admit only to illegal assembly. Likewise for the politicians - and the media boss who bankrolls them - who all made a big show of being arrested without resistance during the Admiralty clearance. Presumably, they will all admit guilt. Otherwise, they will turn their grandstanding surrender into a farce. Admitting to peaceful participation in an illegal assembly is no big deal. A lenient judge would probably let them off with a warning. Maybe that is why many smiled or shouted slogans while surrendering or being arrested. But will those whose lives were turned upside down by Occupy settle for lawbreakers being let off lightly? Most of those arrested during the 79 days of protests have been released unconditionally after refusing bail. Commissioner of Police Andy Tsang Wai-hung has set a three-month deadline to decide who to charge and with what. Is a lenient approach in the works to put this divisive chapter in our political history behind us? Tsang talked tough about targeting the instigators. But the movement was leaderless, so who exactly are they? What will it do to our rule of law if the many thousands who paralysed our streets for so long are not made to face the consequences of their actions? Will the 1.8 million Hongkongers who backed an anti-Occupy campaign cry foul if only a few instigators are brought to justice? Will the pan-democratic camp scream political persecution if we see mass trials? The occupied streets are now clear, but the road ahead is lined with booby traps.

Is he talking through his rear end, or does he know something we all don't know? Chen Zuoer, former deputy director of the State Council's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office and now a top adviser to Beijing, has made the jaw-dropping claim that an American organisation bankrolled supplies "worth at least HK$200 million to HK$300 million" for the Occupy camps. That is an awful lot of money, whichever way you look at it. Fantasy or fact? Public Eye does not know. But the starting point should be to ask ourselves if the tents, free food, water, blankets, goggles and hard hats that we all saw at the various protest sites were worth HK$300 million. If no, then let us lay to rest this business about external forces being involved. If the supplies are indeed worth HK$300 million, then how credible is the claim that it all came from local donations, given the well-organised way the supplies were distributed? What struck us was the huge pile of abandoned tents and other supplies amassed during the clearance operations. If it was your own tent, would you not have kept it?