A Hong Kong newspaper executive has resigned from his post following controversial remarks he made at a pro-Beijing rally on Saturday encouraging supporters to cane pro-democracy protesters — a grim suggestion that actually came to pass the following night when white-shirted thugs viciously assaulted dozens of people at the Yuen Long MTR station.
Hong Kong Economic Times Holdings Ltd. formally made the announcement in a stock exchange filing last night. It stated that Arthur Shek Kang Chuen, executive director and co-founder of the Hong Kong Economic Times, tendered his resignation on Monday, and that his resignation was approved with immediate effect.
“Mr Shek has confirmed that he has no disagreement with the board and there is no matter relating to his resignation which needs to be brought to the attention of the shareholders of the company,” the notice said, adding that Shek will remain a columnist for the newspaper.
The resignation came after a video of Shek telling a receptive crowd of pro-Beijing supporters to get their bamboo canes and “beat the kids up” went viral.
In the video, adopting a sort of folksy spare-the-rod child-rearing metaphor, Shek suggests that those who don’t have a cane should go to a local hardware store and “buy a 20-millimeter-thick pipe.”
https://twitter.com/Badcanto/status/1153122966353281025
“It must be made of plastic!” he cautions. “Buy the ones made of white PVC. It’s soft!”
Calling on the crowd to “discipline the children,” Shek adds, “caning the kids is teaching them, not violence.”
The timing of the video could not have been worse. The very next night a group of white-shirted thugs — many of them wielding bamboo rods and the sort of canes Shek had described — laid siege to Yuen Long MTR station and began savagely attacking pro-democracy protesters returning from a rally on Hong Kong Island, as well as journalists, a politician, and unsuspecting passengers.
After the video of Shek began to widely circulate, HKET staff members set up a petition online condemning his remarks, describing them as incitement of the Yuen Long attack.
According to a Now TV News report broadcast on Monday, Shek later retracted his comments.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCPjE-b6d58
