My Take | Defenders of Mong Kok riot now turn their wrath on journalists

Radical localists have proved to be a direct threat to the rule of law, freedom of speech and freedom of the press. So it’s ironic to see so many pan-democratic politicians, student leaders and so-called scholars – at any rate people on the pay roll of universities – lining up to defend or at least justify their behaviour. These are the same people who, after all, make a living sloganeering about such core values. I guess we don’t need Beijing or the government to undermine them. Localists, those monsters they have helped unleash on Hong Kong, are doing a fine job destroying those values we hold dear.

A group of “scholars” – well, mostly ageing assistant or associate professors without a PhD – has demanded the government form an independent commission to look into the Mong Kok riot, on the premise that Leung Chun-ying’s government was ultimately responsible for it.

Meanwhile, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, of the failed Occupy Central movement, has blamed Leung for the riot. I am no clever lawyer like Tai, but shouldn’t the rioters be responsible for the riot?

I confess I wrote this column under a conflict of interest. That’s because I now fear for my safety and that of my colleagues working in the news industry. A nasty little essay, presumably a manifesto by localists, has been circulating on the internet and has gone viral. It’s titled: “Our fists will treat you the same way your lenses treat us.”

Well, you get the idea; it’s open season on us poor journalists. The piece says we have no right to take pictures of non-public figures. But if we do, we have a responsibility to hide their identities, unless we have their prior consent to publish.

It claims this is an ethical rule that governs the conduct of war correspondents and photographers.