Opinion | National security law won’t heal Hong Kong. People need a second chance through victim-offender reconciliation

Name: Hong Kong police officer tackles and pins 12-year-old girl to ground during anti-government rally
Uploaded: 2020-09-24T01:15:18.000Z
Duration: 1 min 20 s
Description: Hong Kong police officer tackles and pins 12-year-old girl to ground during anti-government rally

The rift between the yellow and blue camps won’t be healed under our judicial process that hands out sentences as payback or a deterrent. Civility in conflicts used to be a Hong Kong hallmark, so let’s all aim for reconciliation

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Hong Kong riot police detain a protester in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, on June 12. Photo: AP

C. K. Yeung

Published: 9:15am, 24 Sep 2020Updated: 9:23am, 24 Sep 2020

Hong Kong people need a second chance. Although the fire and fury on the street has subsided, the seething political hatred is lurking just below the surface, ready to erupt when conditions are right. The national security law and heightened police enforcement can only suppress the pent-up political anger, not defuse it. To restore long-term peace and harmony to the place we call home, we need a heart-and-mind solution, not just the long arm of the law.

Such a solution does exist, and has proven effective elsewhere, from Europe to America to China. This should be high on the agenda when Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor delivers her policy address: introduce a victim-offender reconciliation scheme for those arrested in street protests. Give them a second chance.

Until about 10 years ago, when tolerance degenerated into intolerance, civility in political conflicts had been a Hong Kong hallmark. But, actually, we have no age-old feuds, just spur-of-the-moment flare-ups of political passions. What if the masked man who doused an elderly man with kerosene and set him ablaze could sit down with his victim, and come face to face with the victim’s daughter and wife?

I believe the masked man did it in an extreme fit of rage, not premeditated ill will. From the bottom of his heart, has he begged for forgiveness? What would the elderly man say if the two should sit down and talk?

What happened on our streets is not the Hong Kong we know. Away from the violent fury of the streets, humanity is not dead in our city. But it can be restored only through reconciliation. That is the promise of victim-offender reconciliation.

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Hong Kong police officer tackles and pins 12-year-old girl to ground during anti-government rally

It allows both parties to sit down, alongside a mediator, of their own free will, to begin the process of mutual understanding and enhance mutual empathy: to let offenders see and feel the consequences of their action and give them the opportunity to express their remorse; to let victims know how the other side sees the world, and give them a chance to forgive. Reconciliation between individuals will send a powerful message of collective healing that our community desperately needs.

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