◼ POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek November 11, 201935PHOTO
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King Ng, once a healthy 72-year-old retired
mechanical engineer, now suffers from headaches
so severe he often can’t sleep. He’s taken two
weeks’ worth of antibiotics for an upper respira-
tory infection, yet his throat is still itchy and dry
and he has a lingering cough.
Threemonthsago,Nginhaledteargasthrough
the closed—but not airtight—windows of his
second-floor apartment. Hong Kong police have
used the substance to quell pro-democracy pro-
tests almost every weekend, and occasionally on
weeknights, since June 12. They’ve fired almost
6,000 rounds, according to a tally of figures released
in police briefings, in areas that are home to as
many as 88% of Hong Kong’s 7.4 million residents.
On that particular day, Aug. 5, police fired
800 rounds as the demonstrations spread through
14 of Hong Kong’s 18 districts, including Ng’s neigh-
borhood, Wong Tai Sin, which has the territory’s
highest concentration of elderly people. Most of
the district’s residents live in crowded public hous-
ing towers, where the median per capita income is
just $21,500 a year. “We’re the lowest on the food
chain here,” Ng says, shrugging. “I feel a bit angry
because it’s not only the elderly people and chil-
dren here, but everybody in Hong Kong is suffer-
ing from the tear gas.”
While other politically troubled areas—Cairo,
Caracas, the West Bank—have been more heavily
tear-gassed, according to human-rights groups,
the amount used in Hong Kong is unprecedented
for a tightly populated urban capital. Depending
on wind conditions, building density, and where
it’s released, the gas often can’t escape or has
nowhere to go but up, into the windows of residen-
tial tower blocks. While protesters have occasion-
ally employed stationary tactics, including staging
sit-ins at the airport, Hong Kong’s demonstrations
have on the whole been unusually mobile, shifting
as they move through the city—a strategy the par-
ticipants call “Be Water.”
The police have described tear gas in official
statements as the “minimum force necessary to
disperse rioters” and defended its widespread use.
“In simple words, protesters chose the location,
the police had to deal with them where they gath-
ered and where they may cause violence or damage
to public safety and public peace,” said Secretary
for Security John Lee during a press conference● Thedenselypopulated
city isfeelingtheeffectsof
6,000cans of tear gasthedayaftertheAug.5 citywidedemonstrations.
Front-linedemonstratorsadaptedbywearing
gas masks, allowing them to get close enough to
active tear gas canisters to extinguish them or
throw them back at police. In early October, Chief
Executive Carrie Lam attempted to curtail the
demonstrations by invoking an emergency ordi-
nance to ban masks during public gatherings. The
plan failed: Protesters openly defied the ban, and
police continued to fire tear gas.
Numerous improper and potentially hazardous
usesofteargashavebeencapturedontelevision
ordocumentedonsocialmedia.Riotpolicefired
it directlyatprotestersintheenclosedticketing
platform of a subway station in August, in viola-
tion of their own safety guidelines, prompting crit-
icism from the United Nations Commission on
Human Rights and Amnesty International. After
photos of spent canisters that were past their
use-by dates appeared on social media, raising
more alarm, Assistant Police Commissioner Mak
Chin-ho said at a news conference that expired gas
posed no additional health risks and only affected
the ability of the canisters to disperse gas effec-
tively. Nevertheless, the police pledged to stop
using them.
Unexpiredteargascausescoughingandwheez-
ing,skinirritation,andrashes,aswellasthetears
thatgiveit itsname.Theprocessoffiringthecan-
istersproducessmallamountsofcyanide—“not
so high as to be lethal,” says Karen Mak Ka-wai,
a chemistry lecturer at Hong Kong University.
But the gas remains stable for only three to five
years, after which the risk increases. When
Kwong Po-yin, a doctor and district councilor
in Kowloon City, surveyed 170 journalists who’d
experienced heavy tear gassing while report-
ing from the front lines of a protest in late July
(aroundthetimetheuseofexpiredteargaswas
discovered),96.2%reporteddifficultybreathing,
persistentcoughing,orcoughingupblood;72.6%
hadskinrashes,redness,oritching;and40.6%
saidtheyhadgastrointestinal symptoms such as
diarrhea or vomiting, well beyond what would be
expected from typical exposure. There’s no way
to know whether these symptoms were caused by
the expired gas, the high concentrations used, or a
mix of these and other factors, Po-yin says.
“We know that tear gas can be dangerous,”
says Rohini Haar, an adviser with Physicians for
Human Rights and a researcher at the University
of California at Berkeley. “This is what happens
when indiscriminate weapons are used indis-
criminately,” she says of the tactics in Hong Kong,
referring not just to tear gas but also to rubber“It’s not only
the elderly
people and
children here,
but everybody
in Hong Kong is
suffering from
the tear gas”