tim's experiment

The disorders at a demonstration in Central on March 6 provoked interesting responses. Let me say at the outset that like everyone who was not there – and probably a good many who were – I have very little idea of what happened. So I proceed on the basis that everyone was doing more or less what they were supposed to do. The interesting thing is not the game, but the post-match comments.

First up was the Secretary for Security, Ambrose Lee. Mr Lee was asked about reports, which seem to have been accurate, that an 8-year-old boy was sprayed with pepper foam during the festivities. Now this report did not present any huge difficulties for an official spokesman. Clearly no sane officer would deliberately target a child with pepper spray. One would expect that with the spray, as with any other police weapon, the officer concerned would recognise his responsibility to be sure where it was pointing and who was going to get the good news before he pulled the trigger. Maybe in the excitement of the moment someone was a bit generous in his spraying. Or maybe someone jogged his elbow. No harm was done to the child and no harm would have been done by a polite expression of regret that someone had intercepted something which was not intended for him.

Instead, however, Mr Lee uncorked some verbal pepper spray of his own. It was, he said, inappropriate to be using children as a weapon to defend amid confrontation”, and it was “bad for children to bring them to those violent scenes”.  The problem with the first part of this is that no evidence has emerged, from Mr Lee or anyone else, that children were being used as any sort of shield or defensive weapon. No doubt Mr Lee would say that his remarks were entirely hypothetical and were not intended to apply to any particular individual in particular. Let me say in a similarly hypothetical way with no resemblance intended to any real person living or dead, that a minister whose response to a minor PR problem was a resort to venomous lies would not be fit to be a minister.  The problem with the second part of Mr Lee’s observation is that it is his job to preserve public order, not to issue retrospective travel advisories if the result of his efforts is a public brawl. Demonstrations in Hong Kong are generally peaceful. It is his job to keep them that way. His account of the proceedings was that protestors “were not willing to leave in a peaceful way, which led to a police decision on using a minimum level of force”.  If the result was unfit for children perhaps the level of force was not as minimal as it could have been.  I have seen something of police anti-riot rehearsals. Clearly our boys are well prepared to deal with a screaming mob bent on the destruction of all that we hold dear. Whether training for this eventuality is the best possible preparation for dealing with protesting members of the Hong Kong middle classes is another matter.

Mr Lee’s performance, though, was a model of soothing sanity compared with the performance later in the week from the Commissioner of Police. Asked if he would care to apologise to the pepper-sprayed kid, Mr Tsang Wai-hung flatly refused. “I don’t think we have done anything wrong,” he said, reassuring those timid citizens who supposed that the use of chemical weapons on primary school children was an essential part of law enforcement. “It is really an Arabian Nights if maintaining law and discipline needs to apologise.”  Now someone, and I fear Mr Ambrose Lee is not suitable for this task, needs to take Mr Tsang aside and point out one or two things. The first one is that it is not the job of his Force to maintain “discipline”. The police are the servants of the public, not its masters. Enforcing the law is quite enough.  The second is that there is nothing in the law of either Hong Kong or common courtesy which suggests that if you have a good purpose you are absolved from the obligation to apologise for your mistakes. All policemen seek to uphold the law. Nevertheless in the course of this laudable pursuit, accidents happen. Officers kick down the wrong door because they got the address mixed up. Innocent bystanders are hit by bullets intended for criminals. Detective constables with over-active hormones rape women in police stations. Innocent railway passengers have their heads blown off by anti-terrorism squads. Sooner or later Mr Tsang is going to have to say “sorry” for something. Last week would have been a good time to get some practice.