-- written by Yan Pat To, Ryan
Today, the demonstration against WTO was quite peaceful. But I think the police and reporters made the demonstration become awkward. Sometimes I felt like watching a performance of the theatre of absurdity.
Firstly, I must make a brief account of the previous days’ atmosphere in Hong Kong. These days, the focus of HK media was thrown upon Korean farmers ---- whether they will take radical actions. It unintentionally (intentionally?) forces Hong Kong people to be in the psychological status of self-fulfilling prophecy ---- we expect the Korean farmers will do something special and ‘radical’. According to the prophecy, it must become true as we all believe in it, or we make it become true.
Before WTO, I have queried that Hong Kong police are not mentally strong enough to face the anti-WTO demonstration. Hong Kong police are too fresh as local demonstration is so peaceful and fearful to the unexpected. Therefore, when HK police are on duty, they must be in high tension. They may be over-sensitive to any ‘unexpected’ action. Finally, they may over-react and are more violent than usual.
Unluckily, it happened. Today, Korean farmers were just holding a shrine in memorial of Li Kyang-hae and gained access to the Convention Centre. Surely, they failed so they burnt the shrine. Then they just tried to push to cross the line. But, after a while, the police made use of the spray pepper foam to the protesters. As I observed, the police could resist the protesters and Korean farmers could not cross the border. I wonder whether it was necessary to upgrade their counter action as police’s original action was quite successful. I think it was related to the police’s previous expectation --- because Korean farmers were ‘violent’, the police should be more violent in order to combat against them.
Reporters shared the same expectation in a different sense. They expect that Korean farmers will take radical action. Reporters do not want to miss any scenes so they shot their cameras to Korean farmers when they were in the crowd. While Korean farmers tried to push to cross the line, the reporters came close to them and tried to record their action clearly. As we all know, local media was competitive and if they missed any scenes or their competitors shot a better photo, they became losers in today TV news or on the next day newspaper. Therefore, at the front line, I saw that there were far more reporters than Korean farmers. It made Korean farmers hard to take their action completely. Reporters hindered the farmers’ action. Moreover, the police were too nervous; they even shot the pepper spray foam to local reporters! The scene, actually, was ridiculous.
I expect that in the next few days, local reporters should not hinder the protesters’ action; the police should not be over-sensitive and adopted inappropriate actions. I think Hong Kong people should make use of the chance to learn from others and most importantly, grow to be more mature.