The perpetrators of violent clashes in Hong Kong last week shattered its values in one night, the city’s financial secretary said, urging those involved to “turn their horses back from the cliff.”
The “small group of people who lost rationality” marred the territory’s interests and tarnished its image, and their actions are a departure from Hong Kong people’s respect for the law, Hong Kong Financial Secretary John Tsang (曾俊華) said in a blog post yesterday.
He referred to the biblical story The Judgement of Solomon, in which two women who claim to be the mother of a baby are advised to cut the infant in two.
“A mother who truly loves her son would not saw him in half and would never themselves be the executioner,” Tsang wrote.
Addressing those involved in the clashes, he said, “if you continue wading deeper into the mud, it’s Hong Kong you claim to protect that will lose in the end.”
Tsang’s comments come less than a week after attempts by government officials to clear illegal food stalls escalated into a violent face-off between police and protesters, resulting in injuries on both sides. Officers used batons and pepper spray to disperse the protesters, some of whom threw bricks and started fires in the city’s Mong Kok District.
On Friday, police said they would charge more than 30 people for rioting, while continuing to detain others.
Hong Kong Liaison Office Director Zhang Xiaoming (張曉明) yesterday said that he was shocked and saddened by the incident, which he said contained “terrorist tendencies.”
In a statement posted on the liaison office’s Web site, Zhang said he believed “justice will prevail over evil” and that the Hong Kong government would handle the situation in accordance with the law.
Benny Tai (戴耀廷), a leader of the Occupy Central With Love and Peace movement, said in an open letter on Saturday that Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying (梁振英) bears the most responsibility for the events.
Speaking to reporters yesterday, Leung said many of those charged for the violence were unemployed or involved in extremist political organizations, and as such “don’t reflect society’s opinions.”
Sixty-five people have been arrested in connection with the incident, he said.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hong Lei (洪磊) attributed the events to a “local radical separatist organization,” according to Thursday’s statement from the ministry.
Asked yesterday whether the Mong Kok incident would be used to revive so-called Article 23 anti-sedition laws — shelved after massive protests against their implementation in 2003 — Zhang said, “right now these two issues aren’t linked,” according to a broadcast of his comments on the local Cable News channel.
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