Intensifying violence in Hong Kong calls for tougher line to restore order

Radical protesters in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region went on the rampage again on the weekend, blocking thoroughfares, vandalizing shops and buildings, setting fire to subway stations, beating up passers-by, planting nails on roads, and attacking police officers with petrol bombs, bricks and other objects.

Such acts, which serve no other purpose than to vent the anger of some young people at grievances real and imagined and give them a frission of daredeviled lawbreaking, have seemingly become weekend amusement for some in Hong Kong.

As has now become the norm, businesses affiliated with the mainland are considered fair game for vandalism, presumably under the mistaken belief that is less harmful to the rioters' livelihoods and will have less public blowback. This time Xinhua News Agency's Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau office building in Wan Chai was targeted by the rioters, who destroyed the building's security facilities, spray-painted insulting words on the walls and smashed the front gate and some of its windows before throwing firebombs and paint bombs into the lobby.