Health workers in Hong Kong accused police of spreading “terror” by arresting at least five anti-communist protesters while they received treatment at local hospitals for police-inflicted wounds. Police also allegedly eavesdropped on doctors’ treatments and made arrests without showing a warrant.
Hong Kong is entering its third week of major protests Monday in response to a proposed bill that gives the local government the power to extradite anyone – not just Hong Kong citizens, but visitors and tourists – into Communist Party-controlled China if the Chinese regime claims that the individual in question violated Chinese law. China’s legal framework makes the public expression of anti-government sentiment illegal and allows for the imprisonment of individuals who practice religion outside of the supervision of the Chinese communist regime. Millions of residents of Hong Kong, nominally outside of the scope of power of the Communist Power, have attended protests this month against the extradition bill, demanding chief executive Carrie Lam resign.
Lam has referred to protesters as “rioters,” despite the overwhelmingly peaceful nature of the protests, and has refused to step down despite her unpopularity. While Hong Kong is allowed its “capitalist” system under the “One Country, Two Systems,” policy, Beijing chooses its chief executive and maintains a stranglehold on political power.
The Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) reported on Monday that medical staff working at various hospitals throughout the city held a press conference to condemn the police for taking advantage of the inertness of wounded protesters to arrest them while they sought medical attention. They identified at least five cases of protesters arrested at hospitals, noting that police charged four of them with rioting and a fifth for unlawful assembly. Protesters at the hospital had suffered injuries after being attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets.
HKFP reports that at least 76 people reported injuries during the June 12 protests, the midweek follow up to the first wave of protests that attracted an estimated million people, according to organizers. By June 17, the protests had doubled in size to 2 million people – out of 7 million Hong Kong residents – and forced the Hong Kong legislature to table the extradition bill. Protests have continued because lawmakers can bring the bill back from tabling at any time.
“The law does not say that a police officer can just come and ask for certain information. Police are not the law,” public hospital doctor Alfred Wong said on Monday, according to HKFP. “They must follow existing procedures. If the patient does not agree, they must apply for a search order, and file a request for a medical report.”
Wong has also warned doctors and medical staff that they are under no obligation to request from patients details of why they are in the hospital not directly related to their treatment.
Another health worker present accused police of browbeating nurses scrambling to save their patients and refusing to show a warrant to demand private information outside of the real of what they can ask for. The medical staff present at the press conference reportedly accused police of using “terror” to grow their arrest numbers.
The HKFP reports that police responded in a statement claiming they did not need a warrant to gather intelligence, but promised they would “not block anyone from receiving treatment at hospital [sic] when investigating any cases or performing any operations.”
The police intimidation at hospitals echoes the much more violent scene in Beijing in 1994, when the Communist Party brutally suppressed the ongoing pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square. On that occasion, police entered hospitals and took away corpses and killed many injured, disappearing their bodies to make it impossible to keep a proper death count. Thousands in Hong Kong gathered this year to honor those killed in Tiananmen Square on the 30th anniversary of that massacre, setting the stage for the ongoing protests today.
Protesters have, since the beginning of the recent protest movement this month, expressed fear that police are lying about their behavior and trying to make the case that the protesters are dangerous “rioters” to silence them.
“One month ago, things were still calm in Hong Kong. But in an instant, it has become this. Who knows if it would become like Xinjiang the day after tomorrow because things can change so quickly,” a masked protester said last week. Xinjiang is China’s westernmost province, which the communist government has equipped with a highly sophisticated surveillance system that tracks every citizens’ every move publically. Reports indicate that police have forced millions of members of the region’s Uighur ethnic minority into concentration camps where they face torture, indoctrination, and slave labor.
They continued to object to police on Monday, disputing reports that protesters were preventing ambulances from reaching those in need during a protest Friday in which activists surrounded police headquarters. Protesters told local media that any delays in ambulance arrival times were a lie, as protesters let the vehicles through easily.
“Ambulances had no problem entering at all. Regardless of how many people were there, people always opened up a path for ambulances,” Civic Party lawmaker Kwok Ka-ki said.
Protests continued on Monday, demanding that lawmakers permanently do away with the extradition bill. The protesters are targeting government buildings, “occupying them” or surrounding them to prevent those inside from working efficiently. The South China Morning Post identifies the city’s tax and immigration offices as Monday’s targets.
A student protester, Sean Ko, told the Post that the protesters intend to keep the government offices from functioning.
“We will let civil servants exit the building for lunch and urge them to leave work early. But we are blocking anybody from entering. People can pay their taxes another day or do it online,” the Post quoted him as saying.
The protesters have rejected the idea of dialogue with the government. Joshua Wong, a student leader that rose to prominence during the 2014 anti-China protests, said that he did not think dialogue was possible because the protesters did not have a representative that could negotiate and would not accept negotiation, anyway.
“The problem now is not that everyone wants to have dialogue with [the government], but rather whether you want to accept the four demands,” he said, referring to protesters’ demands for a permanent end to the extradition bill, freedom for detained protesters, punishment for officers who injured protesters, and a formal apology from the government for referring to the protests as “riots.”
Notably, protesters have stopped calling for Carrie Lam to resign. Hong Kong officials have anonymously stated they would not allow Lam to resign, even if she wanted to, because it would be too embarrassing for Communist Party chief Xi Jinping and potentially trigger more uprisings in China.