MR CHAN KIN-POR (in Cantonese): President, it is regrettable that the whole occupation movement is based on the tactics of hijacking and misleading the thinking and notions of the young people.
It is indeed evident that the prolonged occupation of roads in Mong Kok by protestors is in breach of the law. Regardless of whether there are injunction orders, there is sufficient legislation to justify the Police enforcing the law and carrying out clearance operations. The Police have been taking a tolerant attitude in the past two months only because there were a large number of people participating in illegal activities and clearance would result in massive confrontations. The Court has now issued the injunction orders and stated clearly that no matter how lofty are the ideals as regarded by the protestors themselves, they cannot take illegal actions while violations of the injunction orders will even be undermining the rule of law. In fact, the protestors have been misled by the others into believing that civil disobedience is “breaching the law while doing nothing wrong”, which is actually complete nonsense. The injunction orders conveyed a clear message to them, that what they did was basically not as romantic and noble as they had imagined but evident criminal behaviour. Some said that when the Police were executing the injunction orders, they should not take actions which were beyond the scope of the injunctions. This is also “super nonsense” misleading the public. In actual fact, the Police could have taken law-enforcement actions and clear the sites long ago. It is both lawful and reasonable for the Police to carry out clearance operation at any moment. They have waited until the injunction orders are now issued by the Court so that the Court can inform those who do not consider themselves as committing a crime that they are actually doing so.
As for the issue of the operation of the Police, they have actually taken a tolerant approach for a few months prior to this incident. From what we can see every day, the Police kept issuing warnings and urged protestors to disperse peacefully. It will literally be inconceivable if any Member or person says that the Police did not issue any warning beforehand. The Police did try to adopt a gentle approach to disperse the protestors. However, not only did it fail to achieve the aim of crowd dispersal, it also gave rise to the situation where the protestors surrounded, insulted and charged at the Police instead. It proved that the gentle approach simply did not work. Meanwhile, protestors were wearing all kinds of protective gear, including safety helmets, goggles, masks, shields and all. To achieve the goal of dispersal, the Police had no choice but to resort to the use of appropriate force.
The Police are actually very passive in terms of taking actions. Were it not for the protestors who put up radical resistance and charged at the Police, the Police would not have possibly resorted to the use of force. The Police will only need to increase the level of force accordingly under the circumstances where confrontation becomes increasingly radical. Therefore, it is basically unfair and not helpful to solving the problems if we only accuse the Police of using excessive force while ignoring the fact that the protestors have put up an increasingly radical resistance.
Regarding the so-called shopping movement, it is basically a malicious disturbance which causes severe impact on the livelihood of business operators. It destroyed social order and harmed the society of Hong Kong, which will not bring any benefit to those people either. I hope they will stop engaging in such meaningless activities.
I think those who have suffered the most in the occupation movement are neither the Occupy Central Trio nor the student leaders of the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism as they have unlimited resources to support them. If they ever want to migrate to overseas countries or study abroad in future, I believe it will be possible since someone will make arrangements and take care of them. It is most heart-rending to see that the young people are those suffering the most. They have mistakenly believed in some seemingly lofty and romantic goals, and they are also misled by the others into believing that it is “breaching the law while doing nothing wrong”. Hence, they made a courageous move to answer the appeal of other people and surrounded the government departments and the Police. They thought it was just like playing video games that it did not matter even when there were casualties. However, the reality is that any person who is convicted of common assault on a police officer shall be liable to imprisonment for six months; if anyone has injured another person or a police officer in an assault, he or she shall even be liable to imprisonment for a maximum of three years. According to section 17 of the Offences Against the Person Ordinance (Cap. 212) in Hong Kong, any person who wounds another person with intent to do grievous bodily harm shall even be liable to imprisonment for life.
Today, many Members from the opposition camp have referred to some rousing rumours online which created an impression that the Police have done something really wrong. However, I believe many people have learnt to be smart and understand that online rumours are mostly false. Similarly, the reason for some young people storming the Legislative Council a few days ago was that they were inspired by an online rumour which said the “Internet Article 23” would be passed. If they cause any criminal record to be kept of them in the future, I believe they will have no idea whom should they get even with.
A Member just mentioned some radical organizations such as the “Black Panther” and “Red Brigades” in the past. However, he fell short of mentioning what happened to these organizations in the end. Those people not only failed to change society, many members also died in prison when they were old or suffered casualties when they were besieged by the Police while their organizations had disappeared into thin air long ago. I wish to tell the young people that the fight for democracy with the tactics of kidnapping and storming or the idea of escalating the movement is actually a hallucinogen that will only ruin you for the rest of your life. While you have not been dragged into a quagmire yet, you should leave these bad people as soon as possible. I hope those parents who have heard my speech today can actually, for the sake of your children, explain to the young people and try to save as many of them as possible. The journey of their lives will be really rocky if they incur any criminal record. If you have not tried your best to educate them, they will certainly blame you in the future. It will be too late to regret then.
I so submit.