Hong Kong’s protests have descended into savagery – with university campuses leading the charge

What began as a broad and impressive protest movement has become a hate-driven mob. Even our university campuses have been turned into weapons factories and police states – except protesters are running them

Alice Wu

Published: 9:00am, 18 Nov 2019

Why you can trust SCMP

The late Kofi Annan, the seventh secretary general of the United Nations, said “Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” This has taken on a wicked twist in today’s Hong Kong.

Knowledge of makeshift weaponry is power. And Hong Kong’s university campuses have been turned into weapons factories and breeding grounds for violence and destruction. There has been footage of Molotov cocktails being produced in massive quantities and protesters practising archery on campuses they have barricaded themselves in.

They have been given the free pass to hurl university property from heights to block roads and the Cross-Harbour Tunnel, attack road users and set vehicles and toll booths on fire.

Information is indeed liberating when these student-protesters are allowed to control access to campus, including the power to search people and take their belongings. A photojournalist was given the choice of either getting his camera destroyed or handing over five memory sticks. The idea of “guards” at checkpoints confiscating reporting equipment is outrageous – and distressingly real in today’s Hong Kong.

Education is the premise of progress, but our bastions of higher education have been turned into weaponised forts.

The romantic assertion some have expressed at the beginning of the academic year – that for a Hong Kong in crisis, universities can help us find our way back to humanity – has been blown to bits. Weapon factories cannot be the cradle of independent inquiry and deep thinking.

We have to face facts. Students and university staff have fled our university campuses. Non-local students have been evacuated and repatriated. Universities have suspended classes – at least one for the rest of the semester – as they have been taken over by radical protesters, which include students of these very institutions.

Anyone who still harbours romantic and fantastical notions about the senseless violence and lawlessness and holding out hope that it is the answer to our woes need to wake up and smell the petrol – the benzene, to be exact. As intoxicatingly sweet and addictive as the scent is, the euphoria from smelling benzene quickly becomes hazardous. So snap out of it.

Hong Kong is descending into extremism

It’s not just the tear gas that we should be worried about. It’s time to pause and consider our actions after months of being consumed by passions and blind emotions. Let’s reflect on where this “revolution of our times” has taken us.

Hong Kong has gone beyond the brink. We have descended into a hell where the unrelenting fire of hate burns. The fuel of this fire is an incompetent government that has nothing else left to offer.

Our once impressive large-scale peaceful protests have been undermined by the blind violence. We must acknowledge that, and have the courage to be responsible for the choices we’ve made.

It is easier to be morally compromised than to admit to our flaws and challenge ourselves to change for the better. It is easier to dehumanise, to attribute events to negative traits in others and then defend our own by citing circumstances. These rationalisations usually begin with “But what about”, “If it weren’t for”, “They did it first”, and so on. These are words we use in desperate attempts to exonerate personal responsibility. We cannot, in the name of fighting tyranny, become tyrants ourselves.

There is no excuse in setting fire in front of a courthouse because of an inconvenient judgment. There is no excuse in lighting someone on fire simply because he didn’t agree with you. There is no excuse in perpetuating untruths and hate that have consumed this city.

There’s good reason why we are seeing more references made to the Lord of the Flies when it comes to our city. And Piggy’s famous question – “What are we? Humans? Or animals? Or savages?” – should haunt us.

Alice Wu is a political consultant and a former associate director of the Asia Pacific Media Network at UCLA

Post