LettersTo fix Hong Kong, drop the conspiracy theories and start talking

I enjoy Alex Lo’s column My Take, but at times I cannot decide if he is being serious or having a laugh at readers’ expense. His “Of course foreign forces are at work in Hong Kong” (July 8) is one such instance.

As he said on July 5, “conspiracy theories have always been rife in Hong Kong”. But it is not just Hong Kong that has suspicions of foreign interference. We read about this from Canada (“Ads denouncing protests may have United Front link”, July 7) and from the European Union (“Wang Yi to sell belt and road in Eastern Europe”, July 8).

Lo appears to enjoy conspiracy theories, so, in the case of the senior expatriate officers responsible for conducting riot-police operations last month – were they under the control of the Hong Kong police commissioner, or were they acting on instructions from Britain’s MI6? Perhaps giving the order to shoot was a dastardly British plan to instigate an insurrection which would lead to the raising of the Union flag in the Legislative Council chamber. The British expected that then, we all would loudly sing God Save the Queen and the national anthem bill could go the way of the stricken extradition bill.

Let’s get serious – the huge number of Hongkongers who attended the recent protest marches did not do so at the behest of the CIA or other foreign intelligence services, or even in answer to the calls of the pan-democrats.

People hit the streets because our Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor displayed unconscionable arrogance and disdain when she wanted to treat all the millions of protest marchers as impudent naughty children and to blindly proceed with a second reading of the extradition bill.

I totally agree with John Dainton’s letter “The seeds of contempt mean a bitter harvest” (July 7), and that is not a conspiracy theory.