Letters | Gaza war: US campus protests a lesson in the inevitable limits of free speech

Readers discuss the need to stop the anti-war demonstrations from escalating, the morally superior stance of the protesting students, and the difficult choice confronting the government

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Pro-Palestinian protesters confront a Texas state trooper at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, on April 29. These protests have posed a major challenge to university administrators who are trying to balance campus commitments to free expression with complaints that the rallies have crossed a line. Photo: AFP

Published: 11:30am, 8 May 2024Updated: 9:09am, 10 May 2024

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In times like these, when we in Hong Kong see on TV pro-Palestinian protests mushrooming across campuses and wreaking havoc in the US, it is tempting to mimic what Nancy Pelosi said of the Hong Kong protests of 2019, that they were “a beautiful sight to behold”.

But indulging in schadenfreude will not help shine a light on the real issues involved, and there are plenty. Western countries like to lecture others on the freedom of expression, but they should own up to the fact that such freedom is not absolute.

As the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and common law jurisprudence have clearly established, the freedom of expression carries special duties and responsibilities, and can be restricted in accordance with the law to uphold national security, public order, public health or public morals. Authorities everywhere draw a line between peaceful expression of opinions and mass demonstrations that disrupt public order and hamper other people’s freedoms.

From a security point of view, such campus demonstrations are potentially dangerous. They could easily be infiltrated by outsiders (as had happened in Hong Kong in 2019 during the Polytechnic University riots) and morph into violent confrontations. If any key campus facilities are sabotaged or any person, police officer or ordinary citizen, is killed, the demonstrations would escalate into a political crisis.

Police brutality must be roundly condemned, but President Joe Biden is right to stress that order must prevail. I hope American politicians will bear in mind the need to uphold public order and prevent the metastasis of youth demonstrations into a political maelstrom, and stop pointing fingers at others the next time they see protests flare up in other countries.