Benny Tai, Die Hard, still remains at large

Benny Tai Yiu-ting should have been in jail long ago because of planning and inciting “Occupy Central” in 2014 but he wasn’t. He should again be locked up for rigging the 2016 Legislative Council election through the “ThunderGo Project” but he was still at large.

Recently Tai went to a meeting of Chinese separatists in Taipei and advocated “nation building” for Hong Kong. He has again crossed the line. Many people want him kicked out of the University of Hong Kong where he is tenured associate professor of law. Some want him to be prosecuted for advocating “Hong Kong independence”. Some even demand him to hand over his People’s Republic of China (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region) passport because he is not qualified to be a Chinese citizen.

For his seditious actions, Tai has been roundly condemned by the Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Office of the State Council, the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the HKSAR and the chief executive of the HKSAR. Even the People’s Daily has an editorial blasting him. Yet Tai is still teaching in the University of Hong Kong, still holds his PRC (HKSAR) passport and still walks freely, talks freely all over town.

This is Benny Tai, Die Hard, and he is now elevated to be a hero of Hong Kong’s separatist movement.

Some pundits noted that Hong Kong is a free society and the freedom of speech is very much championed. To them, Tai was just exercising his freedom of speech in Taipei, analyzing a scenario of Hong Kong’s future. Judging from its context, this was clearly not the case.

It was above all a Chinese separatists’ forum and Tai was presenting his forecast about what would happen in China and a proposal of “Hong Kong independence”. Tai is a law professor, not a political scientist. So he was not participating in this