Clouds of tear gas drifted across Hong Kong as the police with no obvious plan used violence and an apparent tactic of ‘lets hurt a few and hope they go home’ to try and quell the peaceful protests looking to get open elections for the Chief Executive in 2017.
Whether the protestors succeed in their aims, the biggest loser today is the police – their needless use of excessive force has drawn more people to the protest and achieved nothing. If they’d followed up the first tear gas volley to push out from their barriers and looked to re-open Connaught Road Central to traffic, perhaps the gas use ‘might’ have been justified.
But no, the ‘lets hurt a few and hope they go home’ tactic was pure police intimidation. Whoever gave that order should be charged with harming the injured protestors.
One thing the police must know is that Hongkongers are peaceful protestors, we’ve had hundreds of marches since the last use of tear gas in 2005, involving many groups and a total lack of violence. Even the very emotive 4 June march is trouble free.
The arrival of the military green clad Police Tactical Unit, wearing riot gear, gas masks and wielding and pointing shotguns at un-armed citizens surely marks a new low. What did the PTU achieve? Hurt a few more people, raise the tension several levels bring more people appalled at the police violence onto the streets.
The plan from on-high does seem to be… get the military looking PTU on the street, use violence and the threat of increased violence to intimidate and suppress. Maybe that works on the mainland and in the past without social media and live streaming video. But all its achieved today is to escalate the tensions and hurt innocent people. It is easy after all, if your wearing military grade riot gear and wielding batons to beat up on people throwing up from the effect of tear gas and pepper spray!
At the end of the day, you have to feel for many of the rank and file blue uniformed police obeying the clueless orders from above… talking to many of them, bc found they’d been on duty for as long as 31 hours without sleep and with no relief or rest in-sight.