My Take | Criminal gangs and rioters are undermining Hong Kong’s rule of law
- On the night black-clad protesters took their fight to Beijing’s liaison office in the city, thugs in white T-shirts were attacking people at a subway station
Things really turned out to be black and white late on Sunday night. There were the usual black shirts who, for the first time, extended the mayhem to Western, that is, to Beijing’s liaison office.
Until now, the challenges had been to the Hong Kong government and police. But finally, the demonstrators took their fight to directly challenge the representative of the central government in Hong Kong.
That brings a certain clarity. Since the storming of the legislature at the start of the month, the mass rallies have had less and less to do with the extradition bill, now shelved, and even the Hong Kong government headed by Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor. All the sloganeering notwithstanding, everyone knows Lam is a lame duck, whose comings and goings are becoming more and more irrelevant by the day.
The mass rallies have really been about fighting Beijing. Well, this is the existential moment for Hongkongers: to accept and adjust to China’s rule or reject it; and the necessary follow-up question: whether acceptance or resistance will secure Hong Kong’s future?
These are ultimate questions of value and belief. I know my own answers. Each Hong Kong person will have to decide for themself. As civilised people, the best we can do is to accept those who disagree with us and who choose the opposite of what we believe – without condoning violence.
Meanwhile, thugs dressed in white appeared in Yuen Long targeting black-clad protesters. In the end, though, they beat up anyone in their path. Many didn’t even bother to hide their faces. The brazen manner in which they went about attacking people in a popular mall and on an MTR train platform was truly shocking.
Some people may take a certain guilty pleasure in seeing young protesters being beaten up. But there is no greater challenge to the rule of law and the authority of the police than for gangs of thugs to beat up people in public without restraint.
