Hong Kong Bar Association has been shamefully silent on protester violence and those who support it

However noble their goals, protesters’ extreme violence against property and people can no longer be excused. And yet pundits and, more importantly, members of the Hong Kong Bar Association continue to make excuses for them

Reading Time:4 minutes

Published: 7:45pm, 14 Oct 2019Updated: 8:37pm, 14 Oct 2019

I suspect my mindset must have been hampered by the narrowness of my practice as a criminal lawyer. I find myself forced to identify what I have been seeing on my TV screen for the past few months as grave crimes committed against our community: burning bank branches, destroying grocery stores and restaurants, desecrating crucial railway stations and brutally assaulting other citizens, apparently for holding different political views.

Anyone barely civilised would understand that indiscriminate violence is counterproductive. This probably explains why criminal laws in virtually all civilised jurisdictions proscribe violence.

Thus, our own criminal law lays down boundaries to restrict the behaviour of individuals, without which it would be impossible to outlaw physical conflicts among various members of the community.

Yet, when a large number of people refuse to respect the law, public order disintegrates rapidly. This naturally causes significant disruptions to the lives of many of our polity’s honest and hard-working citizens.

In the context of the present situation, the collapse of order is bringing significant economic woes and may in the end deal a most severe blow against Hong Kong’s unique but increasingly precarious system of limited self-rule.