China Daily (Hong Kong)

Tai’s big fat ‘Occupy’ lie

- TSE WAI- MO The author is a current affairs commentato­r. This is an excerpted translatio­n of his article published in Hong Kong Commercial Daily on Aug 1.

Benny Tai Yiu-ting on July 17 published a self-flattering article in which he tried to defend his dark political psyche and pledged to wreak havoc in Hong Kong by illegal means with an imaginary conversati­on between a supporter of status quo and an assistant professor of law in a South African university back in the apartheid era. The dialog is supposed to be about “civil disobedien­ce, law and universal justice”, but his real intent is to brand himself as a champion of justice, leading the fight against some statutory embodiment of “injustice” with “civil disobedien­ce”.

The apartheid era of South Africa, spanning a good part of the 20th centuries, was the darkest and most inhuman example of the hypocritic­al nature of Western values such as “democracy, freedom and human rights”. Tai depicted himself as an icon of anti-colonialis­t activism and universal justice in the shape of a South African associate professor of law in that era. In doing so he has likened today’s Hong Kong to the apartheid era of South Africa, just to defend his planned “Occupy Central” illegal campaign by covering it with an armor of “civil disobedien­ce”.

The article is morally broke and shows how much he hates today’s Hong Kong, which thrives under the “One Country, Two Systems” principle and the rule of law. Its jurisprude­ntial logic is completely messed up by his attempt to confuse right with wrong. Since he insists he knows rule of law better than his critics, the only explanatio­n for his raging desire to destroy Hong Kong’s rule of law with “Occupy” is that he is academical­ly corrupt and politicall­y bigoted.

Tai refuses to admit that he will break the law with “Occupy” just because he can and insists on calling it “civil disobedien­ce” but has yet to name the law he believes represents injustice and therefore should be countered with “civil disobedien­ce”. He has also failed to provide any factual ground for comparing today’s Hong Kong to the apartheid era of South Africa. This proves his claim that “Occupy” is civil disobedien­ce is nothing but a big fat lie. And his “superior rule of law” theory is a bad joke at best.

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