Hong Kong protesters must see reason and stop chaos: China Daily editorial

There comes a time when an administration has to say, enough is enough.

It is such a time for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, which had been trying to make the demonstrators realize that violence and holding the city and its residents to ransom will not lead them anywhere.

Hong Kong police swung into action on Thursday, and within 24 hours, arrested Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Agnes Chow Ting and Andy Chan Ho-tin, three leaders of Hong Kong separatist groups, and lawmaker Cheng Chung-tai for indulging in criminal activities for the past three months. By so doing, the city's police have sent a clear message: lawbreakers and violent demonstrators, be they locals or foreign nationals, cannot walk free. To tighten the screw on the demonstrators, the SAR government has also banned a planned rally by the separatists on Saturday.

Individuals such as Wong and Chan, who receive resources and moral support from foreign elements through so-called NGOs, have instigated wanton violence in the SAR for the past three months in the name of opposing the now-shelved extradition amendment bill.

By committing mayhem in Hong Kong, the insurrectionists are serving either their own or their foreign patrons' political agenda of containing China's rise. Their intimidation tactics also include psychological warfare aimed at crippling the SAR's law enforcement agency, by attacking police stations and police officers on duty, posting police officers' personal information online, threatening to harm their children when the new school session starts on Monday, and laying siege to their living quarters.

The demonstrators have also held Hong Kong's economy and residents' livelihoods hostage, by blocking major transport arteries and the cross-harbor tunnels, bringing the mass transit rail system to a halt and occupying the international airport forcing the cancellation of thousands of flights.

So, after months of trying to handle the demonstrators with kid gloves to drive sense into them, the Hong Kong administration decided to strengthen law enforcement and rounded up three of the ringleaders and other lawbreakers. But the arrest of the lawbreakers is just the first step toward ending the unrest and restore order in the city.

Now is the time for the public prosecutors and courts, two other pillars of rule of law, to play their due role in bringing the situation in the city back to normal. The sentences handed down by the judges to "Occupy Central" demonstrators, considered too light for the offenses they had committed, and the apparent ease with which the perpetrators of the current violence have got bail have emboldened the insurrectionists.

Hopefully, the judges will do a better job of upholding the rule of law by staying apolitical this time.