On Tuesday, Owen Au Cheuk-hei, former head of the Hong Kong Chinese University students' union, was found guilty together with four of his fellows. He was charged with as many as 13 crimes such as illegally carrying a weapon, attacking the police, and participating in illegal assemblies, and all crimes stand according to the court's ruling.

According to the ruling, about 40 people wearing black assembled on Oct 20, 2019, to ruin order. They wore facial masks to hide their identities. Au pushed a trash can into the middle of the street to block it, while his accomplice Tse Wai Lok beat the policemen on their shields with an iron bar.

Au and his fellows will wait until June 2 for their sentencing, and it is almost sure that they will spend some time behind bars for their crimes. In prison they will have plenty of time to think about why they committed the crimes and what led them down the wrong pathway.

The factors behind their misguided turn to crime must include those vicious media outlets and textbooks that boasted of Hong Kong "independence". Perhaps discontent with the prosperity of the SAR and the happy lives of the people there, certain media outlets played young people against their own motherland under the guise of beautiful words like "democracy" and "freedom", while some textbooks even distorted the Chinese mainland and portrayed British colonial rule as "memorable".

They are the ones who cheated thousands of young people, such as the five. Reports say when Au participated in "Occupy Central" he was as young as 15. In other words, those calling for Hong Kong "independence" had stretched their black hands out to middle school students.

Now that the riots have been pacified, those played by these dark forces face judicial reckoning and will be punished for their crimes. But they are only the cannon fodder. What we really need is to root out the organizers behind everything and make them pay.

They will pay. Jimmy Lai Chi-ying has been detained, his assets have been frozen, and the court ruling on him and five others will come on May 28. Justice will prevail, and those who manipulate others to serve as cannon fodder will receive an even heavier penalty.