Police behaviour

The incident with a minor of 13 years old is just one more that proves we need better surveillance of our authorities. Instead of protecting the kid, in this case the police scared her. Frankly speaking, the tolerant civilization that Macau once was is in danger. The second system may be rapidly turning into a fake copy of the first system. The hierarchy members, instead of putting themselves in a defensive position, have already stated that no violation of the law existed and that the agents acted as they should. In their position, I would state: we are going to investigate and when we have conclusions we will let the public know. There are strong signals of the disrespect of the rule of law system in Macau. It is not only this case but also many others that occur on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the innocent cops carry the can for the guilty and the old Macau, its system and Basic Law seem not to be important. Once again, if the Macau authorities do not respect the Basic Law our great city will soon be a suburb of Zhuhai. Is that what we want? More than that, I do not want to believe it but we are also getting signals of intolerance for foreigners. This phenomenon extends to Hong Kong where yesterday, arriving from a trip, just after the exit gate, a bunch of immigration officials were gathered making a random passport check. As I was waiting for a friend, I observed that with a single exception, only the Africans and Arabs were stopped and had their passports checked. Well, I do not want to call it racism but an excessive zeal for specific races exists and that is not what we should expect from a city like Hong Kong, whose unique position in the world is a result of its long-time tolerant policies. The more we are intolerant, the less we will have a peaceful city. In the case of Macau, the less we respect the law – our law – the less we can expect to have a full second system, where freedoms are respected, where human beings are treated as such. Fortunately, we can still write these lines and thus not all is lost – and we may still expect a brighter future.