Just SayingRecruiting Gurkhas to protect Hong Kong’s MTR from protest vandalism will only make it worse

Yonden Lhatoo warns the city’s embattled rail operator is risking a disastrous backlash against an entire ethnic minority group if its members are hired to defend stations from attacks by radical protesters

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A protester uses a fire hose as Yuen Long MTR station is vandalised. Photo: Winson Wong

Published: 4:59pm, 21 Sep 2019Updated: 10:54pm, 21 Sep 2019

So Hong Kong’s once-glorious, now-battered metro system is planning to hire Gurkhas to protect its facilities from marauding gangs of militant anti-government protesters.

And a key consideration is the assumption that members of this ethnic minority community don’t have enough of a grasp of Cantonese to be offended by protesters yelling expletives at them in the lingua franca. Of all the moronic, ill-advised, short-sighted ideas the MTR Corporation could come up with.

There’s no denying that one of the world’s most celebrated subterranean railways desperately needs to beef up security against hooligans who use it as their punching bag of choice in the name of fighting for democracy, regularly abusing and assaulting its traumatised staff, trashing its station facilities, and beating up anyone who objects to their acts of extreme vandalism.

Police just can’t do the job, hard-pressed as they are to deal with mobs bombarding their own stations with petrol bombs, and millions of dollars worth of damage has already been done to MTR facilities by the time they arrive at the scene of the crime. They’ve become more of a clean-up crew than a law-enforcement authority.

I’m all for equal opportunities in this city and creating jobs for members of our ethnic minority groups. A 200-strong Gurkha security force for the MTR sounds like a light-bulb moment, but only for about 10 seconds. Allow me to explain why.