Letters | Hong Kong protesters seeking greater freedoms risk destroying everyone else’s

Violent protests have been tolerated in Hong Kong in the name of freedom. But some Hongkongers’ extreme pursuit of democratic freedoms is costing others their freedom of speech and other liberties

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Rush-hour commuters queue for other forms of public transport at Sha Tin MTR station, as protesters disrupted train services on November 12. Photo: AFP

Published: 7:30am, 14 Nov 2019Updated: 7:30am, 14 Nov 2019

The open war between the Hong Kong police and protesters brought yet another work day to a chaotic pause. Don’t get me wrong – I am extremely saddened by the news of the death of Chow Tsz-lok last week and of the shooting of the 21-year-old student on Monday morning. But I also empathise with those daily commuters who have been greatly affected, their livelihoods (and lives) threatened.

In this entire crisis, I have been most puzzled by the elite’s tolerance of vandalism and indiscriminate violence in Hong Kong. Protesters pride themselves on speaking up against injustice and the abuse of power but, meanwhile, there has not been a lot of self-reflection and critical thinking when it comes to their own acts of coercion and oppression.

Many people tolerate (if not adopt) violence in the name of freedom. Some of us have written about the hypocrisy of that freedom and the consequences of the reckless pursuit of it. I only want to point out the pressing need to think about how to exercise our freedom so it is not at odds with other valuable goals we pursue in this multicultural and liberal society: that is, the Hong Kong we used to know.

Freedoms, as Isaiah Berlin wrote in his seminal essay, “Two Concepts of Liberty”, come in different shapes. There is “positive liberty” whereby people proactively exercise their agency in society. There is also “negative liberty”, whereby people enjoy the right to be left to do what they are able to do without unjustified interference from others.

Berlin traced positive liberty to Aristotle’s definition of citizenship, the classical ideal of free Athenian citizens participating in government affairs. This, as I understand, is what the protesters are fighting for.

However, the unexamined and unconstrained pursuit of extreme positive liberty may gravely interfere with the other type, negative liberty, which is the cornerstone of defence against totalitarian interference.

In fact, in a society where opinions diverge, negative liberty may be more valuable and obtainable. But what we have seen in the past five months is people being silenced because they have different political views (or perhaps just a different set of priorities), and livelihoods being put at greater risk in a hostile economic environment with the trade war and a recession hanging over our heads. Some have argued that this just provides Beijing more justification for more stringent rules on Hong Kong.