The duality of the security forces’ criteria is absolutely unacceptable. We are following a dangerous path, instigated by someone who wants to transform Macau into a police state and eradicate all the rights of its inhabitants. It goes without saying, but bears repeating, that this entails throwing the established Basic Law — the mini-constitution that should govern Macau according to the formula of “one country, two systems” — into the rubbish bin — a law that emerged after two states, China and Portugal, had assumed to respect the international treaty that guaranteed the return of the administration of Macau to the People’s Republic of China.
Two people, simply because they are the daughters of Macau’s closest approximation to a pro-Democratic MP, were accused by the police of an illegal meeting during this past 4 June, a date that marks the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989.
Unlike the situation in Hong Kong, there was no ban on presence in the Senate Square, nor was any demonstration made. Anything that can be said against this is nothing but a sham that could only be possible in a city where political consciences remain dormant.
It is good to have a peaceful Macau — who could argue otherwise? It is bad that the authorities take advantage of their people’s typical cordiality to begin to impose a regime of “interpretation” of the laws — and in some cases, of interpretation of the mere intentionality of acts, which is worse, to silence what was not even noise to start with.
And when 40 others strolled through public spaces, in a loud and colorful manifestation as the television cameras captured, in support of the passage of a Beijing law imposed on Hong Kong, the PSP and its spokesman who assumed to play a sad role in a Press conference – said nothing.
We were all told that the police, in this case, did not know — that they were not informed.
Perhaps the police neither watch television nor have cell phones where they might receive the thousands of messages that fill social media applications. Nor, perhaps, are these resources available to the agents on the streets where the demonstration went on for hours. Or perhaps the PSP had all its agents busy sweeping up anyone who passed through Largo do Senado.
These are the rights and guarantees. This is the example of the new times. The new reality is as frightening as it is revealing: a duality of criteria that disregards the law and the treaties. These are the new times ruled by the razor of “with us or against us,” used to split normal people arbitrarily into “good people” and “bad people”. Curiously, it is a formula that seems to have been copied from some of the Portuguese past administrations. How ironic it is now to watch those who previously criticized following the same system of “I can, I want and I command.”
How predictable is power. And how predictable the reaction of those who do not hesitate to resort to the reason of force to silence the force of reason.
I sincerely hope that there will be a radical change in this way of acting — first of all, because the people of Macau do not deserve it, and secondly because this new persecutory phobia will damage the foundations of a generous city that stands proudly unique in all of China.
