Opinion | Carrie Lam must stand her ground against the fanatics who have hijacked the protests

Although some people have naively claimed that the absence of violence after last Sunday’s protest rally in Causeway Bay might herald a new beginning, they are clutching at straws.

Realising that the antics of their fellow activists at Hong Kong International Airport five days earlier, when two mainland visitors were beaten up and passengers maltreated, had horrified many, the organisers accepted they had to try to keep a lid on things this time. Even then, some protesters chose to round off their day by catapulting paint bombs at the police in Central, narrowly missing their targets.

However, any contrition will be short-lived. Impossible demands were again trotted out by protest organisers, including a request that the charges against people arrested for rioting, assault and criminal damage be dropped. They want, in other words, to invest political violence, no matter how grave, with social legitimacy, and to place its perpetrators above the law.

Equally fatuous is a counterproposal that the convicted criminals be pardoned by the chief executive. Any such abuse of the legal process would mean that the vast public resources invested in the trials would have no useful outcome, and the vital sentencing objectives of deterrence and retribution would be thrown to the wind. It would also be a slap in the face of the victims of crime, who would be cheated of a just outcome.

Once again, the siren voices have been calling for a commission of inquiry, as if this were some sort of panacea. It would certainly kick things into the long grass, probably for years, with huge numbers of witnesses and endless lines of inquiry, but, at best, it would only excite expectations that could not possibly be fulfilled, without calming things down in the meantime.