By David Barry

 

After months of disruptive violent protests in Hong Kong, can we accept to see a world class  metropolis damaged so badly in both its international reputation and in its extraordinary economic power. Who is going to pay for this huge damage? Instead of asking for establishing a commission to evaluate the so called “brutalities” perpetrated by the police, It would be logic to build up a commission to asses and punish violent protesters. Did they have the “divine right” to destroy the city and its facilities? Somebody could then argue that protesters were following examples coming from the democratic west, what probably they don’t know is that for sure nowhere in Europe or especially in the US would have tolerated a so long violent disruption of an entire city with an international airport closed for two days. Democracy, also in Europe and the US, doesn’t mean that you are legitimized from the legal point of view to vandalize an entire city. Antonio Guadagnin, Italian entrepreneur operating between Italy and Hong Kong comments “In Italy you can’t disrupt a city like that then if we look at all the recent protests all over the world, in Hong Kong the police tried always to minimize its interventions therefore nobody was killed. The business community in Hong Kong suffered a lot during the months of protest and we all hope that we could go back to the old times following the successful one country, two systems formula. I’m also happy that my government chose a neutral stand of non-interference on the Hong Kong issue, this is clearly an internal Chinese matter.” During the violent Hong Kong protests most western powers applied irrationally a series of double standards, why, for example, there was a support for even an Hong Kong secession from China while in Europe the EU backed Spain on the repression of Catalan auto-determination project? Some Catalan leaders are still in jail while others had to flee the country. The basis then of the whole protest, the extradition bill, is only a fair and normal legal tool applied everywhere but in Hong Kong, it is irrational to see how in Hong Kong a murderer can’t be extradite to Taiwan for example. After months of protest then some western countries, supporting the disruptions and the young vandals, were even able to stress their concerns about the investments and the financial resources they lost because of the negative economic climate in Hong Kong. Fortunately the Hong Kong government during the protest made the crucial choice not to surrender to protesters unjustified violence but to follow the rule of law. The other interesting issue now would be to discover who concretely indoctrinated, supported and “fueled “ the young student-protesters, history will judge them but for now the results of more than six months of violent protest will have to be “paid” by Hong Kong as a whole.