Only a Reform Would Do: The Quest for an Independent Investigation that Is True to Its Name

The Citizens’ Press Conference convened today ahead of the IPCC’s press briefing that would come later in the afternoon in response to its latest investigative report. The spokesperson, Mr Chan, expressed that the reason this decision to intercept air time before the IPCC’s launch event for its report is that its content is ‘expectedly predictable’. The IPCC’s lack of independence, and its use as yet another PR gig by the Hong Kong government, has brought doubts to the public on its credibility and relevance before it has even spoken. Chan continued to outline three main issues that the IPCC’s report does not have any statutory powers to address and thus would need to be done so by a newly formed Independent Commission of Inquiry. Future directions to be taken by justice-seeking Hongkongers were also explored on holding the HKPF accountable for its behaviour.

Chan pointed out that the IPCC has ‘no statutory investigative power’ to investigate cases independently, and that it is all but a ‘toothless’ commission and a ‘joke’ against any independent committee of inquiry led by judges and empowered with rights to ‘gather evidence or call witnesses’. He emphasised that Hongkongers ‘have spoken loud and clear for almost a year for an independent investigation on the HKPF’ and even a ‘wholesale reorganisation of the police force’ - but none of this is close to being delivered thus far.

The three suggestions on what must be addressed by an entirely new Independent Commission of Inquiry are:

1) the administrative history and procedure behind Carrie Lam and her cabinet’s forcible attempt to pass the Extradition Bill, their crackdown on Anti-Extradition protests, and the appropriateness of their deployment of the HKPF to ‘resolve political problems with violence’;

2) the consistently unprincipled series of police misconduct and overuse of force, onslaughts on basic human rights, police-triad collusion, and politically-driven law enforcement;

3) the meddling of the executive branch, the legislature, and the judiciary of Hong Kong by Beijing as an abuse of the ‘one country, two system’ framework, and the injection of Communist Chinese discourse into Hong Kong’s politics as a means to exert further control on governance.

Chan further gave examples of international concern over the humanitarian crisis in Hong Kong, and brought into attention the multiple reports on police brutality that have been sent to international and foreign investigative bodies for consideration. Chan described these out-of-the-system efforts to seek justice as being able to ‘communicate strong and compelling messages to international leaders with watertight, expertly done accounts on the case of Hong Kong’, and added that ‘a true and unbiased comprehensive investigation ... can only be done by credible third-party committees that respect fundamental human and political rights’.

Chan concluded that ‘the only way to respond to the IPCC’s report, and perhaps its entire existence, is to ignore it, for it is frankly dead’, and that ‘the fact that the terroristic HKPF exists is a violation of humanitarian principles in itself’, as the regime relentlessly ‘cracks down on Hongkongers with their repressive state apparatus, as this repressive state apparatus is itself an outlaw, as it habitually criminalises victims into suspects’. He declared that the people ‘will stay on the streets, until we see justice done - truly done - with the Hong Kong police behind bars’, for Hongkongers are ‘fighting for being human’, and that ‘the free world will not just watch on’.