I watched with great amazement last Sunday's City Forum programme when made-in-Hong-Kong China expert Johnny Lau Yui-siu asserted to his audience that the recent People's Liberation Army anti-terrorism exercise in Hong Kong was targeted at the July 1 rally. He said it with such conviction and emotion, biting his lips and grinding his teeth, and the floor responded so favourably, that I could not help but shudder.
According to this fairy tale, our dissident 'terrorists' are so powerful that even our elite SWAT team could not handle them, and the PLA had to be called on to deal with them. If the dissidents are so gullible as to buy such nonsense, they will buy anything, and this is highly dangerous.
According to WikiLeaks, Hong Kong is not immune to the threat of terrorist attacks, and there is every reason for the PLA to hold regular anti-terrorism exercises here, if only for our protection. Propagating such conspiracy theories is totally irresponsible; as a public broadcaster, RTHK should see that such damaging propaganda is not launched from this platform.
And don't bring up the hypocritical excuse of freedom of speech. MSNBC recently suspended news analyst Mark Halperin for calling President Barack Obama a 'kind of a d**k'. It was responsible of the network to do so. Compare its decision with RTHK routinely calling Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs Stephen Lam Sui-lung 'the eunuch'.
Judging from the not-too-enthusiastic turnout for the July 1 rally, despite the government's recent mismanagement of several issues (organisers inflated the attendance figure to four times the police's), it is apparent that the dissidents are losing support, and they know it. This is not the first time in recent months that their rally turnouts have been grossly disappointing.
This time, we witnessed citizens trapped in the traffic jam created by the protesters in Central coming forward to reproach the protesters. There is a common sentiment among the public that they have had enough of this behaviour.