The common practice and the written regulations regarding the press as adopted by the Hong Kong Police Force for nearly half a century has been changed. As the definition of “media representatives” in the recently updated Police General Orders is tightened, a membership card issued by the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) will no longer be accepted as an identification for accredited journalists. Citizen reporters, school media reporters, and independent reporters who perform their journalist work at scenes of conflicts are now exposed to police brutality and arbitrary criminalization at any time. The media industry is now distressed and unsettled. However, once you collect your thoughts, you realize that the Police General Orders have long been disregarded. Have the police and the Independent Police Complaints Council ever taken the orders seriously? How many of the officers who have violated the orders have been held accountable?

There was an incident validating Hong Kong police’s "natures” of lying brazenly and abusing power. On August 10, the police stepped into the Next Digital Headquarters in Tseung Kwan O industrial estate, which is spacious and adjacent to a landfill area where people and vehicles are rarely seen. But the Police Public Relations Branch declared that “the place is not spacious enough”. With an uncompromising attitude, they chose to blatantly lie about such a petty matter. Then a blockade was set up unreasonably far away from the building. Only “trusted media outlets” (a term used by the police) were allowed to come close to listen to their briefing. Many media outlets such as Radio Television Hong Kong, Stand News, and the Associated Press were kept 100 meters away. Now, you may know by a handful the whole sack. Little moments like that bear great significance. The police are now so used to abusing their power and obstructing the press by implementing micro control. The deceitful way has become a common practice.

Abuse of power turned benevolence

Ironically, in the letter written by the police to the press about the change in the Police General Orders, the incident outside the Next Digital Headquarters is cited. Such rhetoric is regarded as an exemplary way of communication and a benevolent policy of the police. Unreasonable restrictions can be said as a kind of extraordinary benevolence from the authority. And your rights and interests ever enjoyed by you are now deemed benefactions.

For more than a year, the chronicle of the protests vividly shows that every time a police officer uses force, his colleagues would step in immediately to block journalist’s camera, fearing that their ugliness would be revealed. A reporter making a live broadcast could be labeled as “obstructing police officers' execution of duties” and then ordered to stop filming; a reporter who walks past the police could be pepper-sprayed or targeted at with rounds of pepper balls; a reporter working on the street could be charged with violating the “group gathering ban”. At press conferences, high-ranking police officers do not tell the whole truth as they are often self-contradictory. The examples above are as numerous as the twinkling stars in the sky, and as disgusting as the unpopular made-by-government face mask worn by Carrie Lam. And Article 39-05 of the Police General Orders stipulated that “all officers at the scene of an incident shall not block camera lenses”.

Many infamous scenes of police brutality have been captured by student reporters and budding civilian journalists. Those images include a policeman firing a live round aiming at a person’s chest, and a policeman pressing down a 12-year-old girl onto the ground and putting her under his knees. Within less than a year, independent journalist Vivian W.W. Tam wrote a book as thick as the Bible to record different scenes of conflicts and her own observation. Not affiliated with any media outlets, she worked in the field with her membership card from the HKJA.

The police have said to the media that if “the press does not get in the way of the law enforcement or conduct illegal acts, the police will not obstruct journalists' work.” In this sentence, every word is nonsense. First of all, the motive behind changing the “Police General Orders” is to allow the police to define who qualifies as a journalist. A thorn in the eye of the police does not qualify as a media outlet. The legal obligation of the police (i.e. all officers at the scene of an incident shall not block camera lenses) is then not applicable. In addition, if somebody appears to “get in the way” of the “law enforcement”, the police could accuse him of “obstructing police officers' execution of duties”. Nowadays, simply standing still and breathing could be deemed “illegal behaviors”, resulting in being charged with “illegal assembly” or violating the “group gathering ban”. When the police abuse its power, it is up to the officer to arbitrarily decide whether a journalist is “getting in the way” or not, whether he is committing a crime or not. An officer no longer needs to “obstruct journalists' works”, but simply arrests them.

Over the past year, previously unimaginable and flagrant tactics have been enforced one after another by the authoritarian regime, such as banning face masks, prosecuting dissidents for speech crime, implementing the National Security Law, extraditing local fugitives to China, repression of dissent in the name of the pandemic, suspension of the Legco election, taking “politically incorrect” books away from public library shelves, and censoring secondary school textbooks. Four years ago, election winners were disqualified because they took their oaths “improperly”. Now candidates are barred from taking part in an election because their thoughts cannot be accepted by the regime, which has already started to hand-pick judges and compile a list of state-accredited journalists. Residents in the Greater Bay Area will no longer need to return to Hong Kong to vote in future elections. Liberal Studies as a core subject for local secondary school students will be abolished. Judges whose verdicts are deemed not ruthless enough will be disqualified. Teachers who think independently will be disqualified. Civil servants will be asked to pledge loyalty to the government. State-wide surveillance will be imposed in the name of public health. Everything will be just a matter of course.

Don’t underestimate the will of dictators. They can misappropriate public funds as they wish, and there is a bureaucratic system in which good people are expelled by bad people. Once they envision it, they make it through. When no “separation of powers” becomes reality, now is the time to drive “cooperation of four powers” by incorporating the media that have never been submissive to authority.

The inherent values of Hong Kong are gradually castrated and killed off one by one, and the grudge of Hong Kong people deepens day by day, little by little, relentlessly.

(Allan Au Ka-lun, veteran journalist)

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