A former chairman of the India Association in Hong Kong was hit with blue dye after riot police sprayed people in front of the Kowloon Mosque on Sunday, following large-scale protests in the district that saw tens of thousands participate amidst incidents of violence between protestors and police.
Mohan Chugani was hit with the dye while outside the Kowloon Masjid and Islamic Centre in Tsim Sha Tsui. He was reportedly there with others to protest the mosque from attack, following fears of ethnic targeting after a protestor, Jimmy Sham, was attacked by assailants of alleged South Asian descent.
The Hong Kong police have been using blue dye fired from water cannons to mark out protestors for later arrest. The blue dye was recently being used to mark protestors who were defying a ban on the anti-mask law over a weekend that saw government offices and buildings targeted by fire bombs.
According to the Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP), police had fired the dye at the mosque despite there being no protestors there at the time according to eyewitnesses.
Chugani said, “There were no protesters here, what were they shooting at?” adding that “I used to believe in the Hong Kong police, now I don’t anymore.”
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam visited the mosque on Monday to apologise to community leaders for hitting the mosque with blue due, where she also named Chugani and issued an apology to him. However, he has since refused to accept this in statements given to Now TV, saying that the police have “completely crossed a fine line.”
Chugani had appeared in protests in support of the Hong Kong police in July, according to the HKFP.
In a Facebook post, Fermi Wong, founder of the NGO Unison Hong Kong, issued a statement on behalf of the NGO condemning the incident, “At around 4:30pm today, Hong Kong Police sprayed the Kowloon Mosque and the people standing guard outside of the Mosque with water cannon filled with blue dye. Mr. Mohan Chugani, Former Chair of India Association, Mr. Jeremy, Legislative Council Member, Ms. Phyllis Cheung, Executive Director of Hong Kong Unison and a Hong Kong Pakistani member of Unison, as well as many who were at the scene safeguarding the Mosque were sprayed by the cannon and got injured.”
His statement added that Unison was grateful to that Hongkongers personally took the initiative to clean the mosque from the die. “Regardless of ethnicity, religion, skin colour, as long as we embrace the value of equality, freedom and diversity, we are all part of Hong Kong.”
A Hong Kong police statement said that the incident was an accident, with the Specialised Crowd Management Vehicle deployed to disperse rioters’’ gathered on Nathan Road, saying that “it is most unfortunate that the dispersal operation has caused unintended impact on the Kowloon Mosque.”
The protests in Hong Kong have been ongoing for four months, and began over opposition to a now-scrapped extradition bill that would have had Hong Kongers accussed of certain crimes to be extradited to the Chinese mainland. The protests have since snowballed into a larger, pro-democracy movement, with demonstrators now demanding universal suffrage and an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality that took place over the past few months.
