By Jerome A. Cohen
This remarkable essay by Neville Sarony is the best I have seen on the use of force in dealing with protesters. I almost skipped reading it because of its title, assuming it would be a one-sided, understandably outraged attack on Mrs. Lam. Instead it turned out to be a judicious, balanced disquisition rooted not only in theory but also in practice and personal experience.
It also is a definitive verdict on Mrs. Lam’s future. She must now accept responsibility for the whole mess and for many specific ugly actions, even preceding Wednesday’s climactic events.
Indeed, we have new insights into the origins of the Hong Kong extradition bill from yesterday’s New York Times. Keith Bradsher’s front page story reports on the introduction of the bill, just before the Chinese New Year holiday, to the Executive Council prior to its subsequent introduction to the Legislative Council after the holiday. ExCo quickly approved the bill “with virtually no discussion”. And the top finance officials and leading financiers at the meeting were not alerted to provisions of the bill for “mutual legal assistance in criminal matters” that would permit the police to freeze the assets of companies and people in Hong Kong at the request of Mainland security agencies!
These officials and business leaders were reportedly “appalled” when they later learned what they had approved! This information adds to what has been well-known about the abbreviated procedures to which Mrs. Lam resorted in seeking to gain LegCo’s approval. Was this “good faith” political leadership in the interest of Hong Kong’s people or even its local and foreign business community?