If you are a marked man in Hong Kong, even round-the-clock surveillance cannot guarantee your safety. If the gangsters want to get you, they will, security experts say.
They also agree that the beating dished out to Democratic Party legislator Albert Ho Chun-yan a week ago was a warning. If the attackers wanted him dead, the hit would likely have been outside his office or home, not in a packed restaurant.
The experts also said the culprits were probably dangerously well-connected criminals who were almost certainly outside Hong Kong and unlikely ever to be brought to justice.
Bodyguards could have made a difference in preventing the attack, the experts said. One could have taken the blows during the attack while Mr Ho, who should have been sitting at the back of the restaurant, would have fled to the relative safety of the toilet.
If there were two guards, another could have attempted to guide him out of the restaurant to safety, they said.
Mr Ho fits the profile of an 'at-risk client', according to Philip Curlewis of private security firm Abate Risk, because of his day job as a lawyer 'who takes the cases the others reject'. Mr Curlewis, a former British military policeman who has provided security for businessmen in the region for more than 20 years, had 12 calls from worried Hongkongers requesting security assessments last week.
Normally, he gets two a month.
