Letters | With national security law, the chicken has come home to roost for violent Hong Kong protesters

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Protesters rally in Causeway Bay against national security legislation under Article 23 of the Basic Law, part of an estimated half a million who peacefully took to the streets on July 1, 2003. The government subsequently shelved the bill. Photo: Dickson Lee

Published: 6:45am, 9 Jun 2020Updated: 6:45am, 9 Jun 2020

I read your article “Unity trumps differences” (June 7) with a heavy heart. Like Anna Chan who was referenced in your article, I was one of the 500,000 who thronged the streets in the July 1, 2003 demonstration in the scorching heat, with an air of unbelievable patience and ubiquitous civic-mindedness.

Winding the clock forward by 16 years, my sense of struggle for freedom was crushed by the wanton destruction perpetrated as a group of protesters went on the rampage last year in the Legislative Council building. What followed was a series of incidents that could only be described as senseless and widespread damage to our public transport infrastructure and disruptions to the daily lives of ordinary residents in Hong Kong, not to speak of the fear among many ordinary residents of running into mob violence while going about their daily lives.

The unspeakable setting on fire of a bystander was the last straw for many Hongkongers like myself. While I can understand the sense of frustration of the young protesters who wrought destruction across the city, I cannot bring myself to defend their wanton actions by any measure of civility or public decency, let alone my own conscience.

Their senseless rampage brought to mind the hellish actions of the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. Perhaps this is no coincidence, as both groups have touted their cause as a revolution. All in all, a movement that is co-opted into a wanton disregard for human decency and civility is not one that I can support, no matter how noble its cause may be.

I feel the same sense of unease, in the same way most Hongkongers do, about the imminent national security law to be promulgated by the central government. It is no exaggeration to say the chicken has come home to roost for the violent protesters.

.css-sioo19{color:#c79a00;}Letters | With national security law, the chicken has come home to roost for violent Hong Kong protesters

Letters | With national security law, the chicken has come home to roost for violent Hong Kong protesters