Vijay Verghese

For all Hong Kong’s sake, Carrie Lam must reach out to the peaceful majority, to isolate the radicals and halt the violence

Millions of Hongkongers have protested peacefully, but the small violent minority gets most of the attention. If the chief executive is willing to look past them and engage the silent majority, this story can still end happily

Reading Time:4 minutes

Why you can trust SCMP

Vijay Verghese

Published: 8:00pm, 30 Aug 2019Updated: 10:49am, 12 Aug 2020

At the risk of being labelled outlandishly Micawberish, there is hope for Hong Kong yet. While the violence of past weeks has provided compelling fodder for headlines, it has distracted everyone from the underlying narrative – the great majority of disaffected Hongkongers have sought peaceful avenues of expression.

When offered the opportunity, they have gathered and marched in orderly fashion, largely shunning smaller radical elements armed with petrol bombs and staves who piggyback on the main body and peel off to wreak havoc on smart lamp posts, walls, pavements, police stations and pedestrian railings, a politically futile and increasingly dangerous pastime. Real tragedy will follow if this is not arrested.

It is time to focus on what has gone right, rather than what is going wrong. This is far from flippantly contrarian. Compared to the sort of head-breaking force used to quell violent protests in places like the US, France, South Korea, Thailand or India, both police and marchers in the city have been remarkably controlled thus far.

A million-strong mob armed with Molotov cocktails would be quite a different scenario. Fortunately, we are not there yet. The government must expeditiously engage this silent majority to ween the main body of tired moderates from the lost radicals. It is time to cut through the flimflammery with a firm olive branch to this specific group.

This will achieve two things. Firstly, it will release steam that may then be vented across a table rather than on the street. Secondly, if marches are curtailed through dialogue, not duress, it will deny the violent fringe the sort of mass cover that has thus far provided refuge and pseudo-legitimacy by association.

Having weathered much of the storm, embattled Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor has made some cautious moves in this direction. Clearly, this needs to be a huge outreach effort and not just Carrie Lam & Friends in camera. The media must be present. And moderates from all camps need to be heard so they, in turn, might pressure radicals to change tack.