Just Saying | Hong Kong’s revolution is sliding into terrorism with home-made bombs primed to kill and maim
- Yonden Lhatoo says radicals on the front lines of the city’s protest movement building powerful, improvised explosive devices are ticking all the defining boxes of textbook terrorism while we still argue over calling them rioters
While this great revolution of our times has removed Hong Kong’s bragging rights as one of the safest cities in the world, the security situation has not been deemed alarming enough for people to have to be dragged through metal detectors and frisked by security guards when entering shopping centres, cinema halls, train stations and other vulnerable public venues.
In the past I have often contemplated how easy it would be for the terroristically inclined to set off bombs pretty much anywhere, in such a trusting and open society, but always perished the thought. Not in Hong Kong. Not by Hongkongers.
The would-be bombers were apparently forced to abandon their plot after some of their alleged associates were arrested just hours before the mass rally, with police seizing weapons that included a pistol and more than 100 bullets.