Opinion | Can a Hong Kong in crisis turn away from violence and learn the lesson of democratic compromise? Sudan has shown how

At the beginning of the current protest movement, I wrote that there were two protest cultures in Hong Kong – one peaceful and one violent. At the time, I questioned which one would win. Among some, it is politically incorrect to talk about violence as part of what are regularly described as “Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests”.

Yet, how else to describe the trashing of the Legislative Council, the regular attacks on police stations, petrol bombs, the harassment of passengers at the airport (not to mention the arbitrary detention of two mainlanders in that venue)? These, and more, are violent political acts and must be recognised as such, political incorrectness or not.

Of course, there is violence on the police side as well, and from the gangs in Yuen Long. None of it should be tolerated on either side.

While violence, in general, is a problem for any democratic movement, it is a particular problem in the current context. Protester violence obscures the message from the hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters who have regularly taken to the streets to make their voices heard.

Peaceful protests may have started off as opposition to the extradition bill, but they have become much more than that, involving both young and old and they have a message that must not be lost.