[OPINION] Can Hong Kong’s rule of law survive the anti-extradition bill protest movement?

As a close observer of Hong Kong affairs, I am often asked as to how thewill end. Nobody knows the answer to this question, but I believe a better one would be, how have the protests affected Hong Kong? This question gets to Hong Kong’s “core value” of the rule of law.

Given that no meaningful democratic legislative mechanism exists in Hong Kong, can Hong Kong continue to enjoy the rule of law, while at the same time being under the sovereign control of the People’s Republic of China? On June 12, in order to protest the second reading of the bill, protesters arrived at the Legco complex, occupied Harcourt Road, and massed around the Legco grounds. Although that event was peaceful, police fired multiple rounds of tear gas, pepper spray, and plastic rounds at protesters without prior warning. One person was seriously wounded in the face after having been hit by a projectile fired by police.

These series of armed attacks now appear to be carried out with increasing levels of impunity and an apparent lack of police response.

On Monday, August 5, alone, police fired nearly 1,000 rounds of tear gas at protesters 140 plastic bullets and 150 sponge tipped rounds at protesters in 10 different parts of the territory. Increasingly during the protests in which tear gas has been used on the narrow streets of districts such as Yau Ma Tei, Kwai Fong, Mong Kok Yuen Long or Sheung Wan, residents were subjected to tear gas while taking refuge in their flats.

Just as Dr Martin Luther King Jr did not damage the rule of law when he took part in the march against segregation in Birmingham in 1963, the protesters in Hong Kong today are not damaging the rule of law by participating in marches or sit-ins that the police have proclaimed as being “illegal assemblies.

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