xi's moments
Home | Op-Ed Contributors

We must not forget that violence begets further violence

By Paul Surtees | China Daily Asia | Updated: 2019-08-12 15:56

Protesters use a giant slingshot to shoot bricks and stones into Tsuen Wan Police Station on Aug 5, 2019. [PHOTO / CHINA DAILY]

Many observers have warned of a further escalation of violence on the streets and other public places of Hong Kong, unless more concrete steps are taken now to assuage the protesters about their widening raft of complaints being heard here. It seems that initial violence begets further violence, leading to even more extreme violence, all of which bodes badly for any hoped-for early settling of those very contentious political matters currently under such bitter and violent dispute.

Over this last weekend, there was a well-attended public rally in support of members of our hard-pressed police force, who doubtless appreciated that gesture during these troubled times. Let us not forget that we already have had dozens of police officers sent to hospital for injuries inflicted on them by gangs of fired-up marauding youths.

There was also at the weekend another peaceful mass protest march, marred after the end of it by further fighting with the police, as usual instigated by a small radical minority of protesters. This time, they have taken their protest actions to a new low outside of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region - a deliberately provocative step, with the young protesters / vandals expressing their hatred by defacing the building, including its national emblem. It seems that many of these aggressive youths are doing all they can to spark intervention by the central government authorities - which would fall precisely into these young anarchists' design and the opposition politicians' calculations.

The recent discovery of a cache of arms, including slingshots and even Molotov cocktails, has increased worries about where this escalating violence will lead. Sunday night's dangerous skirmishes, within the Yuen Long MTR station and on trains, answer that concern - we now have a second violent group to contend with, albeit with a somewhat different agenda.

Many, but not by any means all, of the younger black-shirted anti-government protesters clearly turn out in droves every weekend, well-equipped and very willing to skirmish with the police. The world's news cameras have captured deeply distressing images of these hot-headed youngsters trashing government buildings and street furniture, and attacking police lines. It is claimed by some that such directed vandalism occurs without leaders, and that they are simply spontaneous outbursts of political frustration. But that doesn't ring true when hundreds of them - perhaps even thousands - all seem to arrive at widely separated trouble spots at the same time, well-prepared and well-equipped to join in with the latest attacks upon civil society.

Continued vandalism and more violence against the police serve to express their deep dissatisfaction with the status quo and the Hong Kong government has since acknowledged numerous times that it is cognizant of their dissatisfaction. But they need not take to the streets regularly to repeat their message in a most anti-social manner. They have to understand that changes cannot be effected overnight. Let us hope the school authorities, community leaders and various respected and influential people would speak up and reason more with these hotheads, or are they just pawns being manipulated by others for their selfish political objectives?

At Yuen Long, late on Sunday night, a large gang of older, white-shirted thugs, armed with wooden sticks and iron rods, assaulted many passengers at the station and on the trains. They appeared to single out people wearing black - the chosen color of the anti-government protesters. Mind you, not everyone wearing black is a street protester, still less necessarily a participant in the downtown vandalism and anti-police violence. Many unlucky bystanders were caught up in the mayhem as well. Scores of residents were injured, a ghastly thing to see on international news broadcasts, and all-the-more ghastly for those unintentionally swept up in such frightening melees.

Some cynical observers will say that the black-shirts, some of them returning to their suburban homes in Yuen Long from their downtown deliberate violent clashes with police, had a taste of their own medicine when they were assaulted by the white-shirts on their way home. But two wrongs do not make a right. The white-shirted thugs are no better than their violent black-shirted brethren, whatever either side may think.

In any case, it is tragically ironic that there have apparently been complaints from the black-shirted contingent that the police, whom some of them had earlier assaulted, insulted and injured in the city center, were not initially present at the Yuen Long station to protect them from abuse and assault from the white-shirts!

Some observers argue that there is a silent contingent, maybe even a silent majority, who wear neither black nor white and belong to neither camp but who just want to get on with their normal lives peacefully. If so, are their voices being heard?

Let us hope that the extremes of violence dished out by the black-shirts and the white-shirts will somehow cancel each other out, and morph into more civilized discussion and debate toward finding the best way forward for Hong Kong, rather than us seeing any more of such violent clashes.

Global Edition
BACK TO THE TOP
Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349