My Take | It’s lawlessness, not rule of law, HK needs to worry about

When you are in a famine, you don’t need to worry about a healthy diet. In Hong Kong, after more than six months of non-stop violent protests, it’s lawlessness people should fret about. However, media pundits, senior lawyers of the Bar Association, pan-democratic politicians and rights NGOs are still finger-wagging about threats to the rule of law – allegedly from Beijing and the Hong Kong government.

Another day, another robbery; this is not a rhetorical statement, but a statistical one. Throughout October, there was one robbery per day, according to police. Last year, there was one such report every two or three days.

There has been a big jump in the number of robberies reported during the past six months, which coincided with violent anti-government protests. Since August, police have stopped patrolling city streets on foot. Doing so would invite attacks from radicals. Police manpower has also been stretched thin. Police investigating crimes? Forget about it: the crime detection rate for the first 10 months of this year fell to 37 per cent, down from 43.5 per cent during the same period last year.

Talk about opportunistic crimes; criminals are catching on. That’s doubly ironic for a city that until six months ago was one of the world’s safest. The extradition bill, which triggered the violent protests, was meant to prevent Hong Kong from being a haven for fugitives from Macau, Taiwan and mainland China. By the way, many people have demanded the police be disbanded.

The protest movement claims many noble goals, among which is fighting for the rule of law. Now, about a fifth of local voters support violent actions by protesters, including attacks on opponents or hurling petrol bombs and bricks at police, according to a survey commissioned by the Post.