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| “It’s you who taught me peaceful protest is useless” 是你教我和平逰行是没用 |
Barrister Lawrence Lok counters the article yesterday by Edwin Choy which had argued that not condemning the violence is Shameful Silence.
It strikes me that Lok’s argument is a version of the graffiti above. “You made me do it”. Which is a version of the terrorist’s “it’s your policies made me kill them”. Isn’t it? I mean, after the ritual “violence cannot and must not be condoned”, Lok says we must understand that “the problem is an intractable executive”. And if non-violence doesn’t work, well… Lok doesn’t quite say, but the logic is violence. Condemnation of which has been pretty thin. And so, Lok’s “non condoning” notwithstanding, it is de facto encouraged, at least enabled. And now we learn that most people are favour of escalation to violence if “the government doesn’t listen”. That, I find alarming.Lok claims that there are beatings in police stations. That has to be investigated and stopped. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating. Let’s see how that goes.
We also know how stories are being spun. There’s the totally bogus claim that police killed three people on 31 August at Prince Edward MTR. Hence the “8.31 War Crimes” meme. And students are trying to pin the police with murder of a young girl, who appears actually to have committed suicide.
People today will believe any bad thing of the police. It was not this way until the escalation of the violence which happened with the complicit silence of people and organisations like Lawrence Lok’s.
An unconcealed tactical aim of the protesters has been to taunt the police until they react. And Lok is playing along with that.
