I witnessed with my own eyes from the instantaneous and later repeated reports of the Now TV news channel what happened at Central and Wanchai. If I may rely on what I saw, Cheung was trying to "generalize" from SOME local situations (which did not appear on TV ) to ALL such situations. Based on what I saw, when the police advanced, the demonstrators held up their hands in the air. They did not use any violence to attack or try to attack any policemen at all.
The police are authorized by our law to use violence in the execution of their duty. But this is NOT an unrestricted right. The violence used must satisfy 3 conditions:
(1) it must be necessary
(2) it must be reasonable
(3) where it is both reasonable and necessary to use any force, the relevant force must be proportionate to the degree of violence used by law breakers or consistent with the due execution of the relevant polices task at the time of the the police attacks.
Whether it is "necessary" must be considered in the light of all the circumstances of the case eg. when the police are being attacked by the law breakers. I see absolutely no evidence of the demonstrators attacking any of the well guarded policemen who all got helmets, fully fitted with protective visors. Some of them even had shields. I saw no one hurling stones at any of the policemen. The most the demontrators did was throwing some light-weight empty distilled water bottles at some of the policemen, which were all poorly aimed and did not impact anything or anyone with any meaningful force. In addition, this kind of behavior is the exception rather than the rule. Even if one or two did throw such harmless "missiles" at the police, they can in no way be considered to have caused any immediate "threat" to the life or limb of any of "our "policemen. So the police had failed the first hurdle. In fact, it was the police who systematically advanced towards the demonstrators who all backed off and regrouped elsewhere.
Where the first hurdle for the use of force is cleared, then the force used by the police must be reasonable. Again, whether it is "reasonable" is to be judged by the actual facts surrounding its use. It might be "reasonable" if the police were in body contact with the attacker eg. where the attacker uses heavy blows or a stick or a knife or other weapons. None of the demonstrators I saw used any "weapons" like a stick or a knife and none of them I saw used any blows on any policeman. If the crowd can be considered "armed" at all, they were "armed" only defensively: umbrellas, plastic cling wraps, towels, paper masks and the like. Yet the police attacked them by spraying pepper gas right on their face and body at close quarters and later with tear gas shells. I can only surmise that the reason the police used the pepper gas sprays and the tear gas on the crowd was that they requested or demanded the crowd to disperse but finding that the crowd was not responding to such demands or requests, they got impatient and wanted to "finish their job" quickly. Here, we must take into account that fact that the right of a citizen to express his opinion freely and openly is a right guaranteed under the Basic Law, as supplemented by the English common law and the UN Declaration of Human Rights, of which Hong Kong is a party first through Britain and then China. Viewed from this perspective, the police have failed this second test too.
Even if it is reasonable in all the circumstances for the police to use force, the police must still proportion the degree of force they are using to the degree of violence reasonably necessary to counter any violence that they may be encountering eg. blow against blow, knife against knife, gun against gun etc. Against unarmed demonstrators who were NOT in any way attacking ANY policemen or who did not show any signs of trying to attack the policemen with blows or sticks or other weapons, is the use of pepper sprays and tear gas upon the demonstrators not excessive?
In the premises, the claims of the Assistant Commissioner of Police cannot be accepted by any reasonable person. One may well understand the need of the assistant chief of police to boost the morale of his subordinates who were given a most difficult job. But to do so by twisting the facts is an act most unworthy of a person of his rank. Maybe, he learned from the worst possible model he could find: someone who is notorious for NOT speaking the WHOLE truth about anything and who fancies himself as being "smart" and "intelligent" by "passing off" half truths for the whole truth, viz. our CE, someone who, if I may trust in my instincts, may not stay at his present position much longer.
Abraham Lincoln once said: "You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time." We have had enough half truths and often down right lies from our government "leaders" for far too long. We must learn to stand up and tell our Government in no uncertain terms: "Enough is enough"! .
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