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My Take | Revealed: the double standard of Hong Kong’s political stone throwers
The opposition delights in highlighting the ill-advised remarks of rivals, but is not so keen to do when its members make comments in poor taste
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Alex Loin Toronto
The lenient sentencing of two former University of Hong Kong student leaders has brought to a satisfactory end a highly divisive case for all sides concerned. But it does raise an interesting point about the opposition and its double standard.
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Billy Fung Jing-en and Colman Li Fung-kei showed remorse and acknowledged wrongdoing for helping to lay siege to a university council meeting. Officials, including some council members who were targeted in the rowdy protest, pleaded for leniency for the pair.
Instead of imposing custodial sentences, the judge handed down community service orders. The case shows how reconciliation is possible through our courts, even for a polarised community like ours.
It is useful, though, to recall one of the offending acts of Fung, especially in light of the current row over the “kill without mercy” remark of government-friendly lawmaker Junius Ho Kwan-yiu against pro-independence activists.
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The opposition has made much of Ho’s Ill-advised remark by staging rallies and filing complaints to the police and the Law Society. Ho is a lawyer.
Yet, Fung said something similar when he rallied protesters to prevent HKU council chairman Arthur Li Kwok-cheung from leaving after a meeting in January last year. He shouted a slang saying in Cantonese, which roughly means “strike him dead”. This was serious enough for the judge to raise it during court proceedings, though he concluded Fung didn’t mean to cause Li physical harm.
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