Comment by 88840-8855 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 88840-8855 | Hacker News Reader

Police brutality is pure shit and has to be internally investigated and transparently resolved.

However, I dislike the current biased image and video reporting on Hong Kong protests. I understand that this plays perfectly into the current anti-China narrative, but we should be aware that such things are never one-sided and simple.

There is a lot of shit going on from both sides: police and violent protesters. To make a balance to the highly inacceptable police behaviour, please also find footage speaking against violent protesters:

Protestors "arming up": https://i.redd.it/faobvwh4qx331.jpg

Protestors beating up a police man: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/bzza2h/peaceful_p...

The moment when it escalated (the protestors goal was to storm the building, police was behaving in a de-escalative way by withdrawing, while being attacked by objects thrown into the police lines): https://www.twitch.tv/videos/437882587?t=03h05m00s

Coverage of protestors behaving aggressively: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQfOfIAexzw&feature=youtu.be

Again, all this does NOT excuse any tit for toe police brutality attack. But I am a believer of fair and balanced reporting and I want to see both sides.

These people are ultimately protesting because they're under the thumb of a totalitarian regime.

This is like saying that a fair and balanced account of WWII must include a discussion of the Jews being unruly train passengers.

Please don't go full Godwin. It never helps.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

"This is like saying a fair and balanced account of the Kent State Shootings must include a discussion of students throwing teargas at the national guard[1]" would perhaps be a more accurate historical comparison.

But I think a reductio ad absurdum to Godwin in this case makes the point more eloquently. I.e. that the GP is making an appeal to a balanced treatment of violence of "both sides" where one side is literally a totalitarian government that the people in question have no non-violent recourse to replace.

1. https://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/sho...

In the interest of being fair and balanced, I often account for the imbalance of power, or else we wouldn't be seeing any conflict at all. Often the threat of violence is enough to coerce, and that doesn't get coverage. So when there is violent protests, I'm going to give more lenience to the group with far less power and force.

The sentiment is commendable. However, the way you've framed the "both sides" argument is a bit misleading.

Hardly any bricks were thrown. It is also a daft comparison, as the police were armed up for days with extremely powerful weapons. The asymmetry in terms of preparedness and armaments is off the charts.

"The moment when it escalated" is also not quite right as it is missing the context where, on Sunday night / Monday morning, the police attacked protesters with an extreme degree of violence.

Underneath any society there is violence. If you don't pay your taxes, eventually they will forcefully put you to jail.

Now, the default is not violence. These protests started peacefully. But when they are ignored, violence becomes necessary. We are all animals after all, and as such we don't go down without a fight.

Yes, I felt something in tune with that. I sympathize with people protesting the China machine taking over. But storming a parliament rarely ends well, and I respect substantial efforts to prevent that, especially in a somewhat functioning democracy such as Hong Kong still is.

...the parliament is literally ignoring millions of people on the streets.

At some point you make violent protest and revolution inevitable. Peace for the sake of peace is useless and an extremely centrist view.

There is a threshold, I know too little about the situation to say whether my personal one would be reached if I lived there.

No taxation without representation.

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