I’ve KPHBed (HK: Int’l media coverage shows PAP got point on media?) that the ang moh media (including my favourites, FT, Economist and BBC: yup I’m an anglophile) exaggerate the severity of the violence (especially police “brutality” in HK).
Only two people have died despite
Rules of engagement that in July were consistent with best international practice—rubber bullets fired only below waist height, tear-gas used to disperse not to kettle—have been thrown out of the window. Beatings at the time of arrest have become commonplace, sometimes escalating to frenzy. On November 11th an unarmed protester was shot in the stomach at point-blank range. And all this with impunity. Officially, only one officer out of over 30,000 has as yet been suspended for any action against a protester.
and
[P]rotesters have vandalised (or, in protest slang, “renovated”) state banks, Hong Kong’s biggest bookseller (which is owned by the Liaison Office) and restaurants with sympathies assumed to lie with the Communist Party. Rioters now set fires not only on the streets but inside buildings. On November 6th a pro-establishment politician with known links to the triads in Yuen Long was stabbed in broad daylight. People fear being attacked simply on the basis of being Mandarin-speaking mainland Chinese. Nihilism is trumping romanticism: “If we burn, you burn with us”, a rebel slogan from the climax of the Hunger Games saga, has gained currency. Earlier this month it was given awful form when a bystander confronting protesters was doused with something flammable and set on fire (he survived).
So I’m glad that the Economist owned up in an article (above quotes also from said article to show up its reporting):
The violence of the Hong Kong protests, and of the response to them, is hardly remarkable by international standards. Much worse has happened in Baghdad, Beirut, Santiago and Tehran over the past months.
https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/11/21/hong-kong-stares-into-the-abyss-amid-growing-violence
I’m not saying that the violence from both sides in HK is reasonable. It is unreasonable but let’s keep things in perspective especially police violence.
Many years ago when I was a student in the UK, I watched a Panorama documentary showing the French riot police at work and in training. They were a bunch of thugs with the sheriff’s badge.
Another Panorama documentary I watched years later about the UK miners’ strike in the 80s, showed that even ordinary policemen can get carried away when confronted with violent, angry crowds. I remembered the scenes where the police beat their plastic shields with their truncheons like Roman legionaries, before charging. Tribalism at work.
Related post: HK protests: Surreal moments