CY Leung should bear largest responsibility for Mong Kok riot, Occupy leader says

Hong Kong’s chief executive should bear the largest responsibility for the Mong Kok riot, one of the core leaders of the Occupy movement has said.

In an open letter, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, one of the organisers of the civil disobedience movement in 2014, asked Leung Chun-ying to focus on his own administration’s problems, warning that a lack of measures to resolve social injustice could lead to a “looming total collapse of governance”.

But he emphasised that Monday’s riot was “inherently different” from Occupy in its violent nature and he believed violence was not a constructive form of protest.

READ MORE: A message to Hong Kong’s youth: don’t drag the rest of us down with your violent hatred

He wrote: “It is the lack of positive response from those in power to the legitimate request made in a non-violent movement that saw the escalation of violent clashes.”

Tai said the government was wrong to react so strongly to the violence while ignoring its own problems.

“No responsible ... government would only condemn violence without acknowledging the political responsibilities,” Tai said. “The one who has to bear the biggest responsibility for the eruption of disturbance is Chief Executive Leung, who deliberately stirs arguments and uses all the powers available” to him.

READ MORE: Beijing signals less tolerant approach in branding instigators of Mong Kok riot as Hong Kong ‘separatists’