Time to break from Violence

On Sunday morning, I ran along Nathan Road.  Some shops were apparently broken into and trashed by protesters in the previous evening.  This is presumably because these shops were owned by people in the pro-establishment, or pro-police side.  

I can understand boycotting the businesses of people you disagree with.  After all, you are free to spend your money the way you want.  But trashing their business, destroying their property?  That’s way over the line.  It is both legally and morally wrong.  

If some police are using excessive force, shooting at protesters without sufficient justification, breaking people’s arms even when the person is already down on the ground, etc., these police should be held responsible.  But that does not justify hurting their family.  That also does not mean all police officers are bad people.  

The real culprits in this conflagration are the government officials and their cronies who arrogantly tried to push through the half-baked unjust extradition law, who hide behind the police instead of dealing with the politics upfront.  

Protesting peacefully en mass is what a large number of HongKongers decided to do.  Now is the time for the peaceful marchers to distance themselves from the violent faction throwing petrol bombs, breaking into businesses, destroying traffic systems, …   Not only is the violence and destruction morally wrong.  It is dragging everyone down a destructive path which we have not agreed to. 

Peaceful tactics take longer to effect.  It takes greater determination, persistence, and ultimately more courage.  But it has fewer side effects, makes deeper impact, has broader appeal, and ultimately, is longer-lasting.  

It should not be left to the violent few to decide where the society should be heading.  It is time for the peaceful majority to tell the violent few that this is not what we want.  If we don’t have the courage to say that now, we will end up having to suffer the consequences that none of us want.  

This is not a matter of us versus them, even though it may appear to be so.  It is a matter of good against evil, and there is a bit of both on both sides.  No one side has a monopoly on goodness, or evil.  We have to guard against the evil that is in us, and appeal to the goodness of our opponents.  Violence cannot do that.  Only peaceful means do.  The high road may seem too far removed from reality.  Perhaps that is exactly what we need at the moment, to step back a little from the conflagration to see a way out.  

May God help us.