Hong Kong has witnessed escalating violence over the past three days. Rioters turned the city into a scorched battleground by trashing an MTR station and setting a train on fire. Some violent protesters threw petrol bombs at school buses loaded with students, and they besieged Tin Shui Wai police station. On Wednesday, radical protesters upgraded the brutality by setting ablaze a 57-year-old man who got into a dispute with rioters over different views.

At the Chinese University of Hong Kong, black-clad rioters shot fiery arrows at police officers. They even threatened to burn the campus to the ground.

The smoke and fire is jarring to anyone who has Hong Kong’s best interests at heart.

Those violent acts are nothing but the vicious attempts to destroy Hong Kong. Protesters claim that they are with the vulnerable group, while they launch indiscriminate attacks against civilians. They said they are peaceful demonstrators, but they attack police and set fire to public and private property. They called themselves defenders of freedom and democracy, yet they use violence to suppress different voices and deprive others of that freedom.

They add the elderly, children and pregnant women to the list of victims. Their atrocities have gone far beyond the bottom line of humanity.

It is obvious that the violent protests in Hong Kong have deteriorated into an extreme right wing movement which violates both democracy and human rights.

It is reported that quite a few mobs are still making incendiary bombs at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In fact, isn’t the opposition using the mobs as fuel? On November 12, some foreign media said that protesters spread rumors to "demonize" the police and the Hong Kong government. 

Actually, most falsified pro-violence remarks are produced by the opposition media. Among the opposition are lawyers breaking laws, teachers without morality, and fake journalists covering violence. They confuse people online and offline, and some of them are directly sponsored by the anti-China forces, the "Hong Kong Gang of Four". For the sake of seats and self-interest, the opposition stirs up trouble behind the scenes. They attempt to coerce parents through students and suppress residents through violence. They are the initiators and culprits of violence.

Some western anti-China forces also fuel the Hong Kong rioters by smashing and suppressing China. Many Hong Kong organizations and groups served the "transit port" for those western forces, which as we all know supplied mobs with money, goods and training. 

Some UK and US politicians deliberately mix up HK police law enforcement with radical violence, an indication of their ugly aims to collude with rioters. US Vice President Mike Pence said that his country would stand at Hong Kong's side when he falsely incorporates Hong Kong violence into China-US trade frictions. He and his followers threatened China with Hong Kong's circumstances, meanwhile inciting local youth to promote the so-called "color revolution". Their plot is doomed to fail.

There's a military strategy called scorched earth that means to destroy whatever is useful to the enemies. The policy is what Hong Kong radicals currently performing to burn and damage the once-bustling metropolis to the ground for hidden purposes. 

The violent activities will hurt Hong Kong, diminish its competency and drain the order, wealth and ethics it once boasted. Yet western forces will look on the poor city indifferently, and radicals are rushing to fly overseas with prepared visas and packages. Ordinary Hong Kong residents then become the scapegoats.

Yet citizens are becoming much less tolerant and compassionate of radicals who recently set fire recklessly to buildings, victims and even anything they could burned. Anti-violence becomes the biggest consensus. 

More and more residents volunteered to safeguard social order, remove roadblocks and transport the injured. The rule of law, absolutely, serves the most effective "extinguisher" against radical "fire".

Supporting Hong Kong police is the rational way to maintain the rule of law, as well as the democracy. Looking on arson but without any actions to stop it will eventually destroy everything. Take preventive measures in a timely manner is the rational solution.

(Compiled by Ryan Yaoran Yu, Elaine Yue Lin and Bai Yuanqi)