University campuses must never protect anarchic criminals

Universities around the world are supposed to be peaceful places of higher learning, academic research and civilized debate. Ours were too - once! But recent scenes of wanton vandalism and appalling interpersonal violence on our university campuses by mostly black-clad youngsters have shocked the world. The recent scenes of carnage around our university campuses join with the latest news - of a pistol being found, as well as bombs being set at a school - to illustrate just how far some "protesters" are escalating the levels of wicked violence that they indulge in. Such actions take their perpetrators from the realm of peaceful protesting into the much worse area of clearly anti-social terrorism.

Those who vent their spleen by destroying public facilities, including vandalism on and near university campuses, have long ago lost sight of what constitutes reasonable conduct when protesting. One of the black-shirts' clarion cries is to "Free Hong Kong". But the stark reality is that very many ordinary Hong Kong citizens would be glad when a time comes when they can be free of any more violent, disruptive and destructive actions by these vicious anarchist blackshirts, and our city's streets can become calm and safe again.

It previously struck many impartial observers as rather unexpected to see black-shirted youngsters bent upon destroying their own university campuses. That was when it was thought that most of the on-campus protesters were university students. But more recent intelligence has revealed that university students comprised only a comparatively small percentage of the mobs who turned several of Hong Kong's university campuses into fortresses, from which they could sally forth and attack the police and the public. Many of these blackshirts turned out to be anarchist post-student-age rioters, and with many brainwashed young school pupils along with them.

Our university campuses must never again be allowed to become no-go areas for the police, with so many violent blackshirts using the sanctity of university grounds as a protective refuge. The universities have their own security guards, but these are too few, and anyway they are unarmed, so they can do little to prevent the large rampaging mobs of armed and vandalizing blackshirts operating freely on university premises.

The shockingly violent scenes around and on the Hung Hom campus of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University displayed to the world the hate-induced crimes of blackshirts attacking the police with bows and arrows, hundreds of firebombs, javelins, slingshots, bricks and many other projectiles, as well as their blocking public transport links, including the busiest Cross Harbor Tunnel which is located just adjacent to the campus.

Many thousands of Molotov cocktails since discovered on university campuses have been prepared on assembly lines of blackshirts - any one of which offensive weapons could maim or kill someone. The preparation and use of these firebombs is clearly an illegal activity, and much sterner measures are needed to control such mortally dangerous excesses.

Such clearly criminal conduct should never be permitted, and the university authorities must take much more resolute action to stop their campuses from ever becoming again a safe refuge, harboring violent criminals on their grounds. At the very least, those of their own students arrested for vandalism and interpersonal violence should, once convicted by a court, be permanently ejected from being any longer a registered student there. What university wants to have students who are intent on smashing up the premises, or on beating up those who don't agree with them?

The troubles have now reached a stage whereby several universities have canceled all on-campus classes for the semester, while online teaching can continue. So there is no reason for most students to spend any more time on campus. They certainly should not be allowed on campus to again practice techniques for attacking the police with metal bars or for developing their skills in throwing firebombs, as was seen previously. Non-students should be excluded from university campuses during this period of near-anarchy in our society.

Those of us involved in the world of education in Hong Kong must ask ourselves where we went wrong. How could it possibly have come about that very many local youngsters are so lacking in any reasonable level of self-restraint that they think it can ever be justified to beat up, throw dangerous objects at, or set alight someone just because you disagree with him?

Preparations for aggressive conflict which include pistols and home-made bombs show just how out of control many "protesters" have become. This level of immorality is hard to comprehend, especially since Hong Kong was until very recently a safe and tolerant place. An end to such criminal violence is a must, to allow Hong Kong to recover.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.