Disband the HK Police Force

Nov 10, 2019

Early Oct, I wrote abt a ‘radical idea’ of disbanding HKPF - 6 weeks later, it’s become, sometimes, part of the HK mvmt’s main demands. We look at our protest art to understand how we got to where we are today.

HKers’ original 5 Demands asked for independent inquiry into policy brutality, but as reputation of HKPF fell into tatters, & the men became dogs & then worse in our art, calls to dissolve HKPF appeared late Sep. By then, we knew what they were capable of. Or so we thought.

Oct 1, HKPF shot a teeanger point blank in the chest w/ a live round, just 3cm off the poor boy’s heart. They then refused a volunteer first aider - distraught & begging - to see to the wounded. All the cruelty, the inhumanity caught on camera. The HKPF didn’t care.

What do you do when those who’re suppose to protect you, to represent your interests just don’t? Where’s recourse? What do you do when institutions & governance have been eroded to dust?…

Those are the hard questions that HKers had to grapple w/ the last 5 mths.

It was clear: an institution that no longer works for the ppl needs to go.

So idea of disbanding HKPF caught fire. In our art, HKPF hv long ceased to resemble humans maintaining law & order; demons & dogs creating discord & chaos - who needs that?

The HKPF must go.

These calling for HKPF to disband appeared early/mid-Oct; it was starting to solidify as 1 of the Demands. Note graphics used- they refer to the Oct 1 shot to the boy’s heart & popo gleefully pepper-spraying a journo on 29 Sept, both unforgivable to HKers.

The HKPF must go.

The call to disband HKPF became louder, as testimonies of sexual assaults & brutalities at San Uk Ling detention center came to light, places of worship got ‘smurfed’ by water cannons & HKPF started invading private property we thought were sanctuaries.

The HKPF must go.

And as the truth about HKPF’s assault on civilians at an MTR stn on 31 Aug remain buried, as bodies started appearing from ‘unsuspicious deaths’, HKPF became Death itself. Our art says they are Saturn tearing at our flesh. Hades, staring us in the face.

The HKPF must go.

By late Oct - in just 4 wks! - what was unthinkable, radical, has become, sometimes, a core demand for HKers, pushed into it by the intolerable cruelty HKPF hv displayed. Who would want curs to be armed? Who would want Death to knock on their homes’ doors?

The HKPF must go.

Of the 5 Demands, reforming HKPF is step that’s most likely to return HK to peace to helm out other political solutions; HKers are now mostly on strts to defend neighbourhoods agst these beasts of the state. Once HKPF meets justice, violence will die down.

The HKPF must go.