Editor's note: Fiona Sim is a freelancer and contributor to multiple publications. The article reflects the author's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Leading with claims of police brutality and state violence, Western mainstream media outlets have been quick to post edited videos of police shooting an unarmed Hong Kong resident on Sunday. They left of the original footage showing the protesters ganging up on the police officer. With protesters emulating Joshua Wong's tweet and hailing the popular Western anarchist slogans, one must be cautious not to apply an Eurocentric framework to the Hong Kong context.

Threat to the right to life

For a movement that calls for democracy, protesters do not act democratically. They do not have the consent of the masses and have gone against the will of the majority in Hong Kong. While protesters call for free speech, they have assaulted civilians – ordinary residents of Hong Kong – for using their freedom of speech to denounce and criticize the actions of protesters.

Protesters have attacked and vandalized public transport, including shooting at buses, derailing light rails, and torching residential buildings. Now, they have terrorized the Chinese University of Hong Kong, with university administrators encouraging students to seek refuge in the Chinese mainland amidst the threats of bombing bridges and attacking dorms occupied by students from China's mainland. These acts committed by rioting protesters have endangered the lives and welfare of all Hong Kong residents.

But the cognitive dissonance of the individualistic protester mindset is so powerful that they are deluded into believing they are the victims, even though they are the perpetrators of violations of the human right to life.

The hypocrisy is absurd: Protesters call for the police to be investigated, but the evade accountability for their own violence against civilians. They call their movement leaderless, disguise their identities, and demand they not be arrested nor charged. To them, calls for the removal of police on campuses and demand that Carrie Lam abolish the police force reveals the protesters' true reason behind their police antagonism: the desire to replace state police with their own form of policing.

This form of "pro-democracy" policing would continue to terrorize students from the Chinese mainland and persecute those who disagree with their demands and methods. The ideal world of the protesters appears to emulate the one they claim to be protesting against: anti-democratic, authoritarian, repressive, fascistic, and lawless. A Hong Kong where the decision of who lives and who dies, whose views deserve punishment and whose don't, will be up to a mob of nameless protesters.

Tirade against Hong Kong police force

With the erosion of civil society and abandonment of the law, the Hong Kong police force is correct to act on behalf of the masses and maintain the stability of Hong Kong by containing these violent forces. It is disingenuous for violent protesters to cry for justice when their collaborations with foreign forces, such as the advocacy of U.S.'s Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act of 2019, pose a much greater threat and endanger the sovereignty of China. The "One Country, Two Systems" policy is under threat, and it is the role of the police and the authorities to defend it at all costs.

In over 24 weeks of violent protests, there have been no fatal police shootings. Those who seek peace must have the courage to mobilize against this reactionary violence and stand in solidarity with the Hong Kong police force.