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defrogOr at least there was, on the first day of the Lunar New Year.
The short short version: in Mong Kok, the police decided to crack down on illegal hawkers selling street snacks. (By “crack down” I mean “tell them firmly to get off the street and stop selling their food”.) Some people in the crowd complained. The crowd grew larger, and when the police tried to clear them out, they were pelted with water bottles, garbage cans, wooden pallets and bricks ripped up from the sidewalks. Things got violent enough that one cop pulled his gun and fired a couple of warning shots in the air. From there it got ugly.
You can read the details here and here.
No one was shot or killed, but it was easily the worst episode of violence I’ve seen in the 20 years I’ve lived here.
A few points from me:
1. For people wondering about the #FishballRevolution tag that’s been circulating on the social medias, let be clear: this wasn’t about the street hawkers.
2. For a start, the street hawkers didn’t initiate the protest against the police. That was apparently the work of at least one radical political party, Hong Kong Indigenous, one of several radical “localist” parties that emerged from the Umbrella protests. Their basic line is: fuck you Beijing, stay out of our affairs, and since the HK Govt won't listen and we know peaceful protests don’t get results, we’ll take it to the next level.
3. To an extent, the radical parties themselves are symptomatic of bigger problems in HK. Their membership is mainly angry young people whose prospects aren’t all that great – the education system is letting them down and it’s getting harder to get by as salaries don’t keep up with the cost of living and property/rent prices reach increasingly insane levels. And on top of that, they’ve realized that HK democracy is a rigged game, and the current HK leadership has been no help at all. Which is another reason why I don’t think the riot was about street hawkers. That’s simply not big enough of an issue to justify this level of violence.
4. Even if localist parties did care about the right of street hawkers to operate without a license, it’s unclear to me how beating the shit out of the police is going to further that cause. Even the hawkers have condemned the violence, saying it probably cost them more money and business than if the police had just told them to go home. So either HKI is a bunch of thugs who are using street hawkers as an excuse to start a fight, or they’re idiots who aren’t smart enough to think their political plans through. Either way, it’s not very flattering.
5. There’s little doubt from the video that the radicals were ready for a fight. Those surgical masks, hoodies, pointed sticks and such didn’t materialize out of nowhere. And you simply cannot claim self-defense when you are seen on video actively chasing the police down and bombarding them with rocks, pallets, glass bottles and metal garbage cans.
6. People who hate the current HK Govt (largely because of the Umbrella thing) are making excuses for theprotesters rioters by saying the police started it by trying to shut down the hawkers and then clearing out the people trying to stop them from doing so. Which is like saying that when a cop pulls me over for speeding and my response is to kick his ass, it’s the cop’s fault for pulling me over in the first place like he has a right to do that and anyway speeding’s not a major crime or anything. Which is a stupid argument.
7. As for the claims that the police used excessive force, I’ll admit I’m biased here because I’m from the US, where the bar for “excessive force” is way, way higher. But given what the HK police were up against, I’d say they acted with far more restraint than may have been warranted. I’ll add too that of the 124 people who were injured enough to require hospital treatment, 90 of them were police officers. So if anyone was excessive, it wasn’t the cops.
8. Yes, there’s anecdotal evidence some of the cops got a little indiscriminate with their batons and pepper spray. They’re probably true. But that's not policy – that's happens when yr outnumbered and in the middle of a riot fighting for yr life.
9. The same goes for the cop who fired his weapon in the air. Irresponsible? Probably – those bullets go somewhere. But that still doesn’t justify the violence on the side of the rioters – which incidentally had achieved riot-level by the time that cop decided to pull his gun.
10. As always, reason and facts don't matter – HK politics is so badly polarized right now that people will inevitably twist the facts to fit their narrative or pet conspiracy theory. Same as it ever was – excessive violence is always justified as long as it’s directed against people you think deserve it, and even when it’s not, it’s the fault of the goddamned irresponsible political opposition. The same will likely be true of the subsequent investigation.
Which means we’ll probably see more of this. We’re already seeing exploding garbage cans outside LegCo, and we’re already seeing students forming mobs over the appointment of University presidents who don’t pass their political litmus tests. In their minds they're justified in taking any measures necessary to get what they want, and they’re oblivious to the real-world consequences of their actions. It’s a sad and stupid state of affairs.
If you listen to fools, the mob rules
This is dF
The short short version: in Mong Kok, the police decided to crack down on illegal hawkers selling street snacks. (By “crack down” I mean “tell them firmly to get off the street and stop selling their food”.) Some people in the crowd complained. The crowd grew larger, and when the police tried to clear them out, they were pelted with water bottles, garbage cans, wooden pallets and bricks ripped up from the sidewalks. Things got violent enough that one cop pulled his gun and fired a couple of warning shots in the air. From there it got ugly.
You can read the details here and here.
No one was shot or killed, but it was easily the worst episode of violence I’ve seen in the 20 years I’ve lived here.
A few points from me:
1. For people wondering about the #FishballRevolution tag that’s been circulating on the social medias, let be clear: this wasn’t about the street hawkers.
2. For a start, the street hawkers didn’t initiate the protest against the police. That was apparently the work of at least one radical political party, Hong Kong Indigenous, one of several radical “localist” parties that emerged from the Umbrella protests. Their basic line is: fuck you Beijing, stay out of our affairs, and since the HK Govt won't listen and we know peaceful protests don’t get results, we’ll take it to the next level.
3. To an extent, the radical parties themselves are symptomatic of bigger problems in HK. Their membership is mainly angry young people whose prospects aren’t all that great – the education system is letting them down and it’s getting harder to get by as salaries don’t keep up with the cost of living and property/rent prices reach increasingly insane levels. And on top of that, they’ve realized that HK democracy is a rigged game, and the current HK leadership has been no help at all. Which is another reason why I don’t think the riot was about street hawkers. That’s simply not big enough of an issue to justify this level of violence.
4. Even if localist parties did care about the right of street hawkers to operate without a license, it’s unclear to me how beating the shit out of the police is going to further that cause. Even the hawkers have condemned the violence, saying it probably cost them more money and business than if the police had just told them to go home. So either HKI is a bunch of thugs who are using street hawkers as an excuse to start a fight, or they’re idiots who aren’t smart enough to think their political plans through. Either way, it’s not very flattering.
5. There’s little doubt from the video that the radicals were ready for a fight. Those surgical masks, hoodies, pointed sticks and such didn’t materialize out of nowhere. And you simply cannot claim self-defense when you are seen on video actively chasing the police down and bombarding them with rocks, pallets, glass bottles and metal garbage cans.
6. People who hate the current HK Govt (largely because of the Umbrella thing) are making excuses for the
7. As for the claims that the police used excessive force, I’ll admit I’m biased here because I’m from the US, where the bar for “excessive force” is way, way higher. But given what the HK police were up against, I’d say they acted with far more restraint than may have been warranted. I’ll add too that of the 124 people who were injured enough to require hospital treatment, 90 of them were police officers. So if anyone was excessive, it wasn’t the cops.
8. Yes, there’s anecdotal evidence some of the cops got a little indiscriminate with their batons and pepper spray. They’re probably true. But that's not policy – that's happens when yr outnumbered and in the middle of a riot fighting for yr life.
9. The same goes for the cop who fired his weapon in the air. Irresponsible? Probably – those bullets go somewhere. But that still doesn’t justify the violence on the side of the rioters – which incidentally had achieved riot-level by the time that cop decided to pull his gun.
10. As always, reason and facts don't matter – HK politics is so badly polarized right now that people will inevitably twist the facts to fit their narrative or pet conspiracy theory. Same as it ever was – excessive violence is always justified as long as it’s directed against people you think deserve it, and even when it’s not, it’s the fault of the goddamned irresponsible political opposition. The same will likely be true of the subsequent investigation.
Which means we’ll probably see more of this. We’re already seeing exploding garbage cans outside LegCo, and we’re already seeing students forming mobs over the appointment of University presidents who don’t pass their political litmus tests. In their minds they're justified in taking any measures necessary to get what they want, and they’re oblivious to the real-world consequences of their actions. It’s a sad and stupid state of affairs.
If you listen to fools, the mob rules
This is dF
