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Opinion | Hong Kong protest paradox: can a democracy movement backed by bigotry and vigilantism succeed?
- The humour and humility evident in protest art is sorely lacking in those at the forefront of street unrest
- People who brush aside protesters’ acts of violence are doing the movement no favours
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Why you can trust SCMP
In Hong Kong, there’s poison in the air and it isn’t just toxic tear gas. Too many people are making excuses for inexcusable violence. It’s one thing to hear protesters claim it’s all the fault of the police, but even journalists and foreign commentators are joining the protesters-can-do-no-wrong bandwagon.
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“We in the West have no right to condemn the violence of protesters facing tyranny,” writes Richard Lloyd Parry, talking about Hong Kong in British daily The Times.
On November 28, in the same month that a man was nearly burned alive for disagreeing with a group of partisans, local residents who tried to remove road blocks were physically attacked, a policeman was shot with an arrow and an elderly man died after being hit by a brick during clashes between protesters and their opponents, Parry writes of the protesters: “Far from condemning them as thugs, we should support them in their struggle, recognise their courage and salute them for their continuing and remarkable restraint.”
I beg to disagree. There is inexcusable violence on both sides. The police, who are better armed and enjoy legal privileges, have much to answer for. But the black-shirted demonstrators do not get a free pass to vandalise, let alone beat and burn bystanders.
Parry attributes to Hong Kong a kind of Orientalist essentialism. What might look like deplorable violence to us “right-thinking” people in the West is not deplorable to them. Oh, really?
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