Hong Kong protests: anger mounts as police are accused of trying to rewrite white-shirt mob attacks in Yuen Long with arrest of opposition lawmaker
- Lam Cheuk-ting and fellow Democratic Party legislator Ted Hui were taken into custody on Wednesday morning
- Police said the public had relied on ‘lopsided, twisted, misleading and flawed’ online footage to form an incorrect view of the incident on July 21 last year
Anger over the infamous Yuen Long attacks of July 21 last year by a white-shirted mob reignited anew on Wednesday after Hong Kong police arrested 16 people – including opposition lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting, whom the force accused of rioting and stoking the violence.
After an early morning swoop across Hong Kong to pick up Lam and fellow Democratic Party lawmaker Ted Hui Chi-fung, police held a press conference to offer another version of the night’s drama that proved to be a tipping point for the protest movement as the force became the target of widespread wrath for being slow to act.
02:24
Hong Kong lawmaker charged with rioting over Yuen Long attack accuses police of ‘rewriting history’
Some 13 months after more than 100 men armed with metal rods and rattan canes beat up protesters and passengers at Yuen Long MTR station with police nowhere to be seen, the force on Wednesday sought to apportion responsibility for the violence on the likes of Lam and others at the scene.
02:44
Two Hong Kong opposition lawmakers among 16 arrested over Yuen Long attack and Tuen Mun protest
Challenging previous media reports of the beatings unleashed by the group of men clad mostly in white, police insisted further investigation showed both sides had contributed to the escalation of violence that evening.
Senior Superintendent Chan Tin-chu, of the New Territories North regional headquarters, said the public had relied on “lopsided, twisted, misleading and flawed” online footage to form an incorrect view of the incident.
Police’s own investigation, he said, concluded that both sides were “on equal footing” in their use of force. Chan questioned, in particular, the description of the violence as “an indiscriminate attack” on bystanders and protesters returning home from clashes in the city, on Hong Kong Island.
“Calling it an indiscriminate attack is an inappropriate description,” he said.
