As bad as it is and as much as I support the cause, it's a pretty one-sided post.

The protestors are indeed rioting, literally setting an old man on fire, shooting police with arrows in the leg, petrol bombs, throwing bricks into a mans face killing him, as well as endless things that are, by any rights, illegal (roadblocks, vandalism, looting etc).

For once the religious sector is actually right in HK: Both sides need to show restraint.

We know, everybody knows - indeed, everybody in Hong Kong knows - that their cause is an impossible goal. Short of the CCP being overthrown by a democratic government that arises from nowhere with no military (as in, impossible) or invaded by the US (impossible), HK will fall in line, one way or the other.

So turning to violence may be the natural flow of events for this kind of thing all over the world (look at Chile, Bolivia, Iraq and more going on right now, too), but in the case of HK it's nothing but damaging their only goal: to raise awareness and show the Chinese government for what they are.

In fact, the CCP is loving this. There's no risk of the government being overthrown and running away to Mexico, and at the same time, they get to prove 'the HK youths are violent uncivilized thugs/terrorists and the peaceful people of HK just want to get back to their way of life - the only way for this is for military intervention to create peace once more'

Meanwhile, the rest of the world is slowly losing support the more news of violence they see. It's totally counter to their cause at this point.

Yes, the police are being overly brutal, but so are the protestors. What they need is a leadership role. Decentralized protests make it impossible to negotiate or open any form of dialogue