Benny Tai Yiu-ting said Hong Kong’s chief executive should focus on his own administration’s problems
Hong Kong’s chief executive should bear the biggest responsibility for the Mong Kok riot, one of the core leaders of the Occupy movement has said.
In an open letter, Benny Tai Yiu-ting, one of the organisers of the civil disobedience movement in 2014, asked CY Leung to focus on his own administration’s problems, warning that a lack of measures to resolve social injustice could lead to a “looming total collapse of governance”.
CY Leung has condemned the riot. Photo: Simon Song
But he emphasised that Monday’s riot was “inherently different” from Occupy in its violent nature - and he believed violence was not a constructive form of protest.
READ MORE: A message to Hong Kong’s youth: don’t drag the rest of us down with your violent hatred
He wrote: “It is the lack of positive response from those in power to the legitimate request made in a non-violent movement that saw the escalation of violent clashes”.
Tai said the government was wrong to react so strongly to the violence while ignoring its own problems.
“No responsible ... government would only condemn violence without acknowledging the political responsibilities,” Tai said. “The one who has to bear the biggest responsibility for the eruption of disturbance is Chief Executive Leung, who deliberately stirs arguments and uses all the powers available.”
READ MORE: Beijing signals less tolerant approach in branding instigators of Mong Kok riot as Hong Kong ‘separatists’
In the long run, Tai said violence was not a viable option for protesters, because the government retained the strongest power of force and the general public did not support it.
He said a preferable non-violent option was for people to vote in the Legislative Council election. “If more than half the seats were taken up by people outside the pro-establishment camp ... there would be a political earthquake,” he said.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/1912751/cy-leung-should-bear-biggest-responsibility-mong-kok-riot
