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Opinion | Lessons from 1970s Hong Kong: the danger of unchecked police powers, and how a judge-led inquiry and an amnesty can work
- When police mutinied in 1977 against an ICAC probe into corruption within the force, the governor of the time backed down, quickly ending a profound crisis
- Carrie Lam’s policy address was perhaps her last chance to apply similar political solutions to the current crisis. Unfortunately, she completely missed the mark
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Why you can trust SCMP
The last law and order crisis in Hong Kong was not during the Cultural Revolution disturbances of 1967. It was a decade later, when the police mutinied, staging mass demonstrations against the Independent Commission Against Corruption for its investigation of institutionalised corruption in the force.
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The existence of this cancer had been hinted at in an inquiry into the 1966 riots – caused by local grievances, not Beijing – but nothing much happened until the creation of the ICAC.
This followed the prosecution of two expatriate superintendents who had acquired vast sums, and the rapid migration of numerous locally recruited senior sergeants. The police then showed that they believed themselves to be above the law, forcing governor Sir Murray MacLehose to back down and offer an amnesty. The crisis was brief but profound.
These episodes offer three lessons. First, they showed the dominant power of the police in a government of unelected bureaucrats and without its own army. In Hong Kong over the past four months, other officials have been notable for their silence while policy on the ground has been in the hands of the police.
From the first big rallies in June, it became evident that clearing the streets of demonstrators was a goal, not merely the protection of people and property. The cycle of aggravation saw pepper spray succeeded by tear gas, rubber bullets, beanbags and even live rounds.
In the absence of political initiatives, the police naturally assumed they were in charge. People on the streets were subject to the police, but the police themselves were subject to no formal oversight. Stirring the pot on both sides were rumours, false news, and maybe some truths about both black hands and provocateurs.
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