2014-11-27
Student leader Joshua Wong (L) speaks to reporters outside a courthouse after he was released on bail in Hong Kong, Nov. 27, 2014.
AFP
Hong Kong’s police force came under fire on Thursday in the wake of its clearance of a pro-democracy camp in Mong Kok, as student leaders said they were subjected to violent treatment during arrest on public order charges.
Joshua Wong, 18, who heads the academic activist group Scholarism, told reporters after being bailed out from his arrest for contempt of court, that police who dragged him away from the Mong Kok street held by Occupy Central protesters until early this week had used violence.
“Around 10 police officers, including those in blue uniforms and helmets, rushed towards me and pushed me to the ground, so as to limit my range of movement,” Wong said. “I was injured in the neck and elsewhere.”
“They hurt me six or seven times, including in my private parts.”
Wong, who has become one of the key figures in the Occupy Central movement since it began on Sept. 28, hit out at the use of violence, saying that police had also taunted and cursed at him during his overnight stay in Kowloon’s Kwai Chung police station.
Wong, who was also pelted with eggs by two unidentified men outside the court, is now banned from entering the area that was the scene of Wednesday night’s clashes, during which at least two journalists were arrested and one beaten, as a condition of his bail.
Similar experience
Fellow student leader Lester Shum, who was arrested at the same time, reported a similar experience.
“I was carried away by several police officers, who punched me and kicked me,” Shum told reporters after being bailed out. “Some of them pulled my hair and pinned me to the ground.”
Pan-democratic politicians also criticized the operation.
Labour Party chairman and lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan said the government, which ruled out further dialogue with students earlier this month, should have worked harder to find a political solution to the stand-off.
“Political problems shouldn’t be resolved with police violence,” Lee said in a statement.
And lawmaker Dennis Kwok, who represents the legal profession in Hong Kong’s Legislative Council (LegCo), said police had failed to comply with correct procedures by not explaining the High Court injunction to people when they and court bailiffs began clearing barricades and encampments at the start of a two-day operation that saw at least 148 people arrested.
“I think the police action has not followed the procedures … to explain the gist of the injunction order to the people at the scene, before they start the arrests,” Kwok told reporters.
The Hong Kong Federation of Students (HKFS) said the operation was a bid by the government of embattled chief executive C.Y. Leung to clear protests in the name of a civil injunction brought by transportation groups.
Leung’s administration had “attempted to borrow the name of the injunction to carry out what is in effect a clearance,” the group said.
