Hong Kong: reporter blinded covering protests on her bid to sue police
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Version 0 of 1. Police cannot shoot people ‘because they are panicked or angry’, says Veby Mega Indah In late September, the journalist Veby Mega Indah stood on a footbridge in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai district documenting another day of clashes between anti-government protesters and riot police. The demonstrators, crouched under umbrellas, inched forward toward police firing and retreating down a set of stairs toward the street. A journalist of 13 years, trained to work in hostile environments, she stood to the side, out of the way of the standoff and in a group of other reporters. She knew to wear goggles, helmet and a high-vis jacket clearly labelled PRESS. But suddenly, the police were waving their weapons toward them. Indah heard someone shout “kei che, kei che” (“journalists, journalists”). “I saw them taking aim and I heard someone say, ‘Don’t aim at us!’ and before I could react I saw the projectile coming,” she said. She felt a searing pain behind her goggles and collapsed, caught by a journalist behind her before hitting the ground, where she lay bleeding and repeating: “My right eye, my right eye.” Later she would find out the projectile had struck that eye, rupturing the eyeball and leaving her partially blind for the rest of her life. In the two months since, she has pushed the police to investigate the incident, and pressed for the name of the officer involved so she can pursue a lawsuit alleging criminal misconduct. Now, she worries she is running out of time. Private prosecutions have a time limit of six months after the alleged incident. Indah’s case has also been delayed by her application for legal aid, which has been in processing for more than two months, according to her lawyer. “The clock is ticking for me to be able to have justice,” she said. After reviewing footage of the scene, captured by the many reporters on the bridge, she believes she was hit by a rubber bullet, shot by a police officer firing recklessly. She hopes her case will inspire a reckoning for the police force, which she believes has dramatically escalated its tactics over the past two months. “I hope to get justice and that finally there will be reform of the system so cases like mine don’t happen again,” she said. “They cannot shoot people because they are panicked or because they are angry. [This is] so they can understand they are not above the law.” Hong Kong police have said they are investigating the incident. But Indah’s lawyer said no other witnesses at the scene had been interviewed and the police had not given them any details about the progress of the investigation, despite requests. “What the police are doing is running down the clock,” her lawyer, Michael Vidler, said. Indah came to Hong Kong in 2012 from Indonesia to report for the Indonesian-language Suara Hong Kong News, aimed at the city’s approximately 150,000 Indonesian domestic workers, many of whom can speak Cantonese but cannot read Chinese or English. When the protests began in June, the paper was flooded with questions from confused and scared readers. Indah began reporting from the protests, livestreaming what was happening and where. She wrote explainers detailing why people were demonstrating, interviewing protesters, residents and lawmakers. Indah bristles at criticism that her injury is the unfortunate consequence of the risks journalists have willingly taken to cover the Hong Kong protests, now in their seventh month. The Hong Kong Journalists Association has documented more than 50 cases of journalists who self-reported incidents of police intimidation. The cases range from police shining industrial spotlights at reporters or their cameras so they cannot film, to being pepper-sprayed and fired on with teargas even when they have not been close to protesters. “Are they all accidents? Are they all coincidences?” she said. “Is that about journalists putting themselves in danger? It’s not me or a single journalist’s lack of training. It’s about police targeting journalists.” Today, Indah is unsure whether she will ever be able to go back to the frontline. Relying only on her left eye has badly affected her depth perception. While she is able to talk about what happened, she cannot bear walking on the footbridge where she was injured. One thing she is certain about is pushing ahead with her case. In the days after she was shot, friends and family advised her to focus on recovering. One friend cautioned her: “You better keep quiet. This is big. You might not be able to handle it.” Lying in her hospital bed, Indah thought about other people who have been injured at the protests but were afraid to speak out and risk being prosecuted for illegal assembly or other charges. “This is not only about me, not only about journalists, but about Hong Kong people. Because what happened to me will happen again if there are no consequences for the police, if there is no reform of the system,” she said. “So that’s why I decided to continue because God knows it would be easier for me if I gave up.” |