IPCC Defends Findings On Yuen Long 999 Calls

The Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) has defended its finding that the city's emergency 999 hotline was deliberately flooded with calls during the Yuen Long attack last July, saying it had come across posts on an online forum calling on people to jam the system.

Speaking on an RTHK programme, the chairman of the watchdog's publicity and survey committee, Clement Chan, dismissed claims that the IPCC was biased towards the police, or only relied on information provided by the force itself.

Chan said the report, which he described as "impartial" and "objective", had tried to reconstruct crucial events, such as the July 21 Yuen Long attack using police data, news footage and by appealing for information online.

He said the IPCC was able to conclude that the 999 hotline was abused on the day, after coming across posts on the LIHKG forum calling on people to jam the system.

The chat forum is popular with anti-government protesters.

But his comments drew fire from Democratic Party lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting, who accused the police watchdog of selective exposure and distorting the truth.

This was echoed by several callers to the radio show who said they had tried to call police to inform them of the attacks, but were ignored by officers.

One of them, a man surnamed Yuen, said he tried calling several times but was almost immediately hung up on by the police. “I seriously question if the police had indeed colluded with the triads”, he said. “If not, why would they ignore our calls like this?”

Another caller, a woman surnamed Chan, also cast doubt on the IPCC report, saying she found it hard to understand why the police hadn’t arrested more of the white-clad men who were caught on camera hitting train passengers and bystanders.

“We can all see with our own eyes how badly attacked those people were. Why did the police turn a blind eye to such violence?”, she questioned.

The police said seven people have been charged for their alleged roles in the vicious attacks, but none have been put on trial yet.