Probe ‘police abuse’

A Hong Kong lawmaker yesterday called on the UN to launch an international investigation into a police crackdown on pro-democracy protests, voicing alarm at escalating “brutality”.

“Hong Kong is on the verge of a humanitarian crisis,” Tanya Chan told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, asking it to urgently discuss the situation and to dispatch investigators to probe abuses.

Chan, the founder of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy Civic Party, was earlier this year handed a suspended eight-month jail sentence over her role in creating a civil disobedience campaign known as “Occupy Central” in 2013 and the student-led Umbrella Movement that brought parts of the city to a standstill a year later.

She was invited by the non-governmental organisation UN Watch to take its allotted spot and briefly address the council after more than three months of huge, sometimes violent rallies calling for greater democratic freedoms and police accountability.

Pointing out that she was speaking as Hong Kong yesterday entered its 100th day of protests, Chan cautioned that “there is no sign that police will exercise restraint”.

“This is a result of the lack of democracy in Hong Kong, as the government is not held accountable for its endorsement of police abuse,” she said, maintaining that police “call protesters cockroaches” and see violence against them as “acceptable pest control”.

She urged UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet to “support our appeal for this council to convene an urgent session and to establish a mission of inquiry to ensure the human rights of the people of Hong Kong.”

Bachelet has voiced measured concern over violence by all sides in Hong Kong and urged the authorities to conduct a “prompt, independent, impartial investigation” into alleged excessive force by police against protesters.