Fishballs to bullets – that escalated quickly

Hong Kong experienced a fiery Chinese New Year as protesters and the police clashed on the night of the 7th of February. With 130 people injured and 67 people arrested, one might be surprised to find out that the riots started with fishballs, a popular local snack that could be bought from street vendors.

During the Chinese New Year, as many restaurants close early, some streets become informal food markets, populated by hawkers that sell curry fishballs, imitation shark’s fin soup, and other street foods. Many of these hawkers are doing business illegally, as they haven’t obtained a licence from the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD). In fact, a vast majority of Hong Kong’s hawkers are illegal as new hot food licences haven’t been distributed since 1980, due to difficulties in managing the safety and cleanliness of the food stalls.

The FEHD are known to be rather lax regarding these offences during the Chinese New Year, as the informal markets are traditional during this holiday. However, this year, the FEHD decided that New Year’s Eve would be a prime time to enforce the regulations. The news spread and groups organised protests on social media against the FEHD in the Mong Kok area.

The FEHD were helpless against large groups of protesters, and the police were called in, leading to a standoff between the two sides. Violent clashes broke out and the city descended into darkness and chaos. The violent protesters threw bricks and other items at the police, physically assaulted officers, and set cars and mounds of trash alight. On the flip side, police officers were using pepper spray, attacking protesters with their batons, and throwing bricks back towards the crowd. Members of the press were also injured in the skirmishes. The night climaxed with gunshots, fired towards the sky by a traffic police officer, and as the sun rose the protesters retreated. In the days that followed, people were arrested for rioting and obtaining access to a computer with intent to commit an offence or with a dishonest intent.

The night left the city in shock. As politicians awoke, parties began to swiftly condemn the violence. Government officials stated that the riots had nothing to do with localist movements, the government’s approval rating, or hawker regulations. Supporters of the protest condemned the police force’s actions with others coming to the support of the police force, saying that the police were, in fact, too restrained.

Supporters of the protest zero in on the fact that fishballs led to bullets and police brutality, while those against looked at the injuries sustained by the force and the helplessness of some under-equipped officers.

Violent clashes broke out and the city descended into darkness

Pulling the camera back, we see that the clashes escalated step-by-step and the violence from both sides was irrational and unreasonable. But more importantly, the fishballs were just the final straw for the protestors, pushing them towards violence. We are looking at a city that has slowly but surely fallen from its place as the number one international financial centre in Asia to a political mess with a steadily worsening economic issues. Sure, this may be the result of the rapidly growing Chinese economy and changes in the socio-political environment, but the government is not without fault.

The executive branch of Hong Kong has no accountability to the general public, because it is appointed by a small group of electors. The Legislative Council is controlled by the pro-establishment parties, with 30 out of 70 of the seats being functional constituencies, allowing small groups to have immense voting power. Time after time, the Hong Kong government has continued to push unwanted policies, heedless of public outcry.

Some examples include: The Mainland and Hong Kong Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement, The National Education issue, the police response to Occupy Central, the shameful faux universal suffrage plan, the attempted implementation of simplified Chinese and Mandarin as the main language for education, the missing booksellers incident, the forced appointment of the Hong Kong University Council chairman, the push for the Copyright (Amendment) Bill 2014 are all examples of enforced policies for the interested reader.

But Government officials believe that this Fishball Riot has nothing to do with their actions? They may be acting clueless now, but let’s dispel once and for all the fiction that the Hong Kong government doesn’t know what it’s doing. It knows exactly what it’s doing. They are undertaking an effort to change the city, and to make it more like China. A significant portion of the public (particularly the younger generation) are tired of the mainlanders flooding the streets of Tsim Sha Tsui, buying up property and causing baby formula shortages while the government does nothing but encourage them. Something needs to change, and in my opinion, the first step would be to remove the system of electors and institute universal suffrage.

No one is saying that true universal suffrage would solve every problem in the city and make it a magical fairy land with a 420% GDP growth per year and a happy population. However it would make the government accountable to its people, and perhaps these seemingly thoughtless actions, and the riots that follow, would happen less often.