Opinion | Hong Kong protesters must reject violence to succeed: just look at Gandhi, Mandela and Martin Luther King

The ongoing protests in Hong Kong sparked by the controversial extradition bill are nowhere near an end. The adverse effects of the protest on Hong Kong’s public order and economy are self-evident. MTR services are blocked, roads are jammed, mobs have stormed public buildings to vandalise and destroy, and that is just the least of it.

Yes, in the United States, we have the First Amendment which secures us the natural forms of freedom, including the right to protest, but it is on the premise that we “peaceably assemble to petition the government” to redress our grievances. How can the people of Hong Kong wave the American flag at their protests without understanding or respecting the fundamentals of America’s constitution and amendments?

These protests can hardly be called peaceful when they disrupt society and disobey basic laws regulating violence. How would US enforcement respond to such actions on American soil? No wonder some call these demonstrations riots.

The moment that the international community begins to doubt the peaceful nature of the protests is the moment the protesters should re-examine themselves and their approach; for how can a protest succeed if the means are questionable? Perhaps Martin Luther King Jnr said it best in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, that “it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends”. Good intentions do not justify bad actions.

Hong Kong prides itself on being an educated populace, or so it appears to the world, but what can education achieve if it is not applied?