【明報專訊】THE Civil Human Rights Front yesterday staged a protest march that ended with a peaceful demonstration outside the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in Hong Kong. While the way the police dealt with the demonstration was not without room for improvement, and the flowerbed outside the Liaison Office has always been highly controversial, the police yesterday showed a tolerance hardly seen in the past few years, and the general atmosphere was relatively peaceful. The Liaison Office and the police should be able to see from this that, when Hong Kong people are prevented from exercising their freedom of assembly, clashes between the police and the people will only escalate, just as flood waters held back by a dam will continue to rise and water pressure will continue to mount. It is obviously advisable for the police to be more tolerant towards demonstrators in future, just as it is always better to divert flood waters into harmless channels than to try to dam them up.