Hong Kong Police Shoot a Protester, 18, with a Live Bullet for the First Time | Hacker News Reader

Hong Kong Police Shoot a Protester, 18, with a Live Bullet for the First Time

nytimes.com

74 pointssmacktoward27 comments

> In the video, the protester who was shot is first seen joining a black-clad mob of people who chase a riot officer and tackle him to the ground. They kick him and beat him with what appear to be metal pipes.

> At one point, the protester approaches a second police officer who is standing nearby with a handgun drawn. Just after the protester hits the officer with the pipe, the officer fires at the man at point-blank range.

I'm just as pro-democracy as the next guy, but I can hardly fault a police officer for shooting someone in the shoulder when they are being hit with a metal pipe.

I hope the pro-democracy movement in HK returns to its origins of peaceful demonstrations. I don't think its good for the movement's long-term sustainability to turn violent.

What is the end game to your advice? China can successfully plant saboteurs into the movement and will win that game. The only people watching HK with sympathy are outsiders, and any intervention must be weighed against war.

We already have mass persecution if ethnic Muslims in China with reports of organ harvesting. The world (who?) isn’t going to war with China over something like that.

> "I hope the pro-democracy movement in HK returns to its origins of peaceful demonstrations."

Peaceful protests have limits in what can be achieved, if anything, and have actually slowly bit by bit lost a little freedom every year. They've been protesting every July 1 since handover-day 1997 [1], as well as every anniversary of Tiananmen [2], as well as every new year demanding universal suffrage and further influence of mainland China [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_1_July_marches [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorials_for_the_1989_Tiananm... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong_new_year_marches

> I can hardly fault a police officer for shooting someone in the shoulder when they are being hit with a metal pipe

There's plenty of occasions where HKPF just brutalized people who were no threat at all, and as far as shooting guns goes, good luck blaming this on the protesters: https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/dc4fc8/another_hk...

> I'm just as pro-democracy as the next guy, but I can hardly fault a police officer for shooting someone in the shoulder when they are being hit with a metal pipe.

I mean, they could run away. The police are there to enforce a new State order. A lot of people don't want that order.

> I hope the pro-democracy movement in HK returns to its origins of peaceful demonstrations. I don't think its good for the movement's long-term sustainability to turn violent.

Well, there's absolutely no hope of a non-violent movement bringing democracy to a state capitalist society. It's never happened, it never will happen. It requires States, which organizationally have diffuse self-preservation functions, to give up power. It's not even clear they can do that. People aren't seeking centrist American approval, they're seeking to self-govern rather than be handed from one massive military power to another.

Americans and many Europeans generally approve of violent police action, which killed 998 people in the US in 2018. Many in shot isolated situations that in no way resemble the wide scale resistance of Hong Kong's pro-democratic movements.

I suppose we should applaud HK police's forbearance up until this point, from the western perspective. American cops would just open fire and then gleefully make up lies about the nature of the demonstrations or their supporters.

>American cops would just open fire and then gleefully make up lies about the nature of the demonstrations or their supporters.

You say that but since the 90s there has been a concerted effort to not let federal law enforcement escalate to that point (at least in group situations like this). In small swat team type situations they can be very trigger happy but in an ongoing clash like this the politicians would (and have) hold the cops to a reasonable ROE.

Edit: Federal law enforcement

> You say that but since the 90s there has been a concerted effort to not let law enforcement escalate to that point (at least in group situations like this).

You say this as if the inaugural protesters weren't rounded up, detained for illegal lengths of time, and subject to spurious lawsuits and fines that were enormously damaging to even passerbys.

> but in an ongoing clash like this the politicians would hold the cops to a reasonable ROE.

You say this like there aren't still ongoing lawsuits of brutality cases from Ferguson or that BLM isn't still organizing widespread civil rights demonstrations that draw hundreds to thousands and then being chased off by cops with tear gas, truncheons, and "non-lethal" bullets.

Closeup video of the shooting: https://streamable.com/2hei6

Longer video of the shooting: https://streamable.com/qtyii

As saddened I am by this, I would like to point out, though, that the protest movement has quickly become just like Occupy, where there are now significant pockets of people taking advantage of the movement to simply cause chaos and unrest unrelated to advocating responsibly for change.

Perhaps they have some remotely legitimate grievance, but more so they're bent on taking advantage of the situation to break windows, hurl petrol bombs, etc. because they're "young and restless".

It is difficult for the police and government to distinguish which is which until every Saturday night when the "action" erupts. How is a movement to handle these types of actors in their midst?

Hope this will change the perception of the behavior of mainland china over HK. Wish them to succeed in being a democratic island.

How? Remember there isn't a pro-democracy media in China; people are just as likely to cheer a robust intervention against the seperatists and disruptors.

It's not an island.

Hong Kong Island[0] is well-named.

[0] https://www.google.com/maps/place/Hong+Kong+Island/

I'm morbidly fascinated by what you thought you meant to say here.

I am going to reach and say that the poster means to describe Hong Kong as Kowloon & Hong Kong Island. I have never been there, I am just here to try clarifying.

I've been there a few times. My fiancee was born and raised on Hong Kong.

It's true that the protests also involve the Kowloon side, and even the New Territories, but it's also perfectly reasonable to refer to Hong Kong as an island, because everything else isn't actually Hong Kong proper.

This piece of news isn't really visible, to the degree I think it should (at least in my country).

I worry that, if the Chinese government feels that their escalation isn't causing much noise on the international stage, they'll take that as an ok sign to continue...

It seems to be getting a lot of attention outside of China.

I think the shooting will be seen as completely justified since the police officer was under attack and appeared to use non-lethal force to defend himself, so China won't see much of a negative response from other nations.

I think citizens in nations like the US who generally support police violence at scale will probably think like you do and suggest an agent of a government that is effectively foreign to Hong Kong was "defending himself" while attempting to disperse a group of protesters advocating for self rule at the behest of aforementioned government.

I'm going to ignore the implied insults in your response and clarify my position, which I don't think is controversial or held only by citizens of nations that you believe "generally support police violence at scale": Any person (or other living being for that matter) that is being hit with a pipe by an attacker has the right to defend themselves from that person.

I just don't see how you can map someone trying to break up a pro democracy demonstration as an innocent trying to protect themselves from an attack. He's a civil officer armed with lethal force. The protesters had blunt objects.

If you enter into a conflict bearing deadly force you either must be prepared to kill or withdraw your presence. It is not some accident that the police officer was there.

True, the policeman wasn't there by accident. His presence was premediated. By China.

There was an understanding - One Country, Two Systems. China abrogated that understanding by 1) creating a legislature that was no longer responsive to residents, triggering the Umbrella movement and 2) unilaterally attempting to impose an extradition treaty.

If China respected that (documented) understanding then most likely this massive fracas would not have happened. First they took over the legislature, and then they went for the justice system. Hong Kong thought they would retain their justice system through 2047, and that expectation was rudely dismissed.

So here we are, with police gunning down a high school student. There were better ways to deal with this situation, but Beijing became arrogant and tried to rush the calendar. End result is the need for a police state to prop up a stalemate of their own creation. The kids who would suffer most under this oppression are desperately trying to find a way out, as peacefully as possible, but JFK had it right; those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.

Yes, he's a civil officer armed with lethal force. He presumably was prepared to kill or withdraw, but managed to prevent himself from being killed by the person hitting him with a pipe or the firebomb that went off shortly after he shot the person hitting him with a pipe, it doesn't look like the person with the pipe was fatally wounded, and the group of people in the area who appeared to be making efforts to injure people and destroy property were dispersed.

I assume you would prefer that this officer was not there in the first place, and Hong Kong was under the control of leaders that were selected in free, fair elections. Me too!

However, the original point I made was that this officer handled the situation in a way that is unlikely to generate much, if any, outrage from the international community or additional sympathy for Hong Kong protesters. Nothing you've said at any point in this discussion has seriously addressed this point, let alone refuted it, so this is probably my last comment in this thread, since you seem to be much more interested in posting rhetoric than having a conversation.

What I'm saying is they ought to be outraged, but we're so used to police violence that when we see a police officer choose to shoot a young person instead of leave the area, folks hem and haw and say, "Well they did have a pipe."

For what it's worth, I am saying you're right. But I also think that non-violent protests only rarely accomplish much of anything on their own when it comes to government change. Folks talk about a moral high ground in these cases, but I think its important to note that the status quo ultimately benefits the aggressors in cases like these.

You can call this rhetoric if you like. I think it's odd you're asking me to provide an address to a point I ultimately agree with? Folks who like police violence will like police violence. You can tell they like police violence because when presented with clear cases of police violence, they make excuses.

I can't help but point out a perfect example of why I don't think you're interested in an actual discussion: The person with the pipe didn't just have a pipe, he initiated the interaction by hitting the officer with it. If the person with the pipe was just walking down the street, or even waving it in a menacing fashion, and the officer fired, this would be a very different situation.

If you genuinely don't see the difference between your description and what was captured in the video, it's not possible to have a rational discussion about this. If you do, you're being disingenuous at best, and it's also probably not possible to have a rational discussion about this.

> he initiated the violence by hitting the officer with it, and the officer responded.

Alternative perspective: the officer initiated violence by being there threatening a crowd advocating for the right to self determination. He came with lethal armament with the obvious goal of dispersing the gathering. That's why he was there, and the video shows it.

You see militarized police as normal, so this doesn't shock you. I refuse to accept that.

You can accuse me of acting in bad faith but I don't see how I could be more honest about my intentions or characterizations. You aren't even really refuting them, it seems you agree that militarized police presence should be normalized in our considerations. I'm not so sure. No good comes of it.

there is no jusificafion to use gun as argued by an open letter of the Public Doctor Association.

Use of gun by the police is a right that need support of the community via law and court. If you can shoot people like that (and not just him there are several other shooting), you have to ask why people has to accept you to have gun. We do not have. Do we trust the system the police will investigate the case of their own kind? If not, should we go to jungle law. Unjust shooting and police violence in many places (like USA and uk) lead to real riot. The system may break down. I hope the police and the government understand how serious the situation could develop.

More importantly it is human rights ignored by the police. Just watch a video of police holding a video camera on a market asking everyone to look at the camera. Then saying you are all rubbish. Another one is about cursing of reporter and if you not go they said they will shoot you like the Indonesian reporter.

There are million coming out yesterday. They should just we go. It is always peaceful if the Police do not overreact. they did.

There is no excuse. Fighting yes but gun shoot no. If the police do not want chaos and even revenge, have to walk back to what they do just 6 months ago. If not, I am afraid I would advice none if you to Hong Kong.

Three finger up : if we are burnt, you will burn with us ... is not just a slogan of a movie. It has been used by the protestor from day one.

Good luck. God bless Hong Kong. We are all Human. We are not cockroaches.

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