Human rights violations on the rise in Hong Kong as rioters escalate violence

FREEDOM OF SPEECH STIFLED

Free speech is at risk too.

Radicals have created an atmosphere of hostility in which anyone who publicly voices support for the police or the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government will be doxxed and targeted.

Last month, a woman was threatened after she said at a community dialogue session with HKSAR Chief Executive Carrie Lam that she was scared to see black-clad and masked people and was not afraid of police officers.

Radicals also used online forums to spread discriminatory and intimidatory slanders and agitate violence against new immigrants.

On Tuesday, Chan Wai-keung, a lecturer at Hong Kong Community College, was besieged for nearly five hours by a mob of unsolicited and masked students at the classroom where he was lecturing.

The besiege, full of radicals' shouting of obscenities, intimidation and vision-harming shots of laser beams against Chan, came after the lecturer wrote recently in a commentary for a newspaper suggesting police charge mobsters with rioting as part of greater deterrence efforts to end chaos following a new regulation to ban face covering in assemblies.

Chan was not the only victim of intimidating acts across Hong Kong that sought to stifle different views from that of the radicals.

When Rocky Tuan, president of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, met with about 600 students and alumni Thursday at campus, he was reviled with obscenities by hysterical students who shot laser beams at him and repeatedly interrupted his replies.

At the meeting, a senior alumnus who reminded radical students to be polite toward the university president was chided "go to hell," while a female student from the mainland who advised students not to overstep the bottom line of rule of law was replied by hysterical yelling of intimidation.

"Why asking a question by a student of different views becomes so difficult?" Tuan said, stressing freedom of speech has its boundary. "I strongly urge all of you to give everyone a voice."