Protests

The world is watching in horror how protests for #BlackLivesMatter has turned from passionate assertion to total riot, including looting by angry mobs. How the police handles arrests of suspected felony which turns to complete brutality is nothing new, and somehow racial discrimination has excessively become a tool for stereotyping crimes.

Protests and appeals for redress of grievances are guaranteed by a free society, enshrined in the constitution, and must be protected as a sacred right that the state has no business of desecrating. All of us have the right to speak, to stand up, and raise our voices in order to be heard. The land of the free shall not abrogate any liberty that we have that history cannot tolerate to recall. 

But things get heated up sometimes. When the people feel that they are being ignored, they do drastic things in order to shift the attention to the damage being done, and hopefully hear what the protest is all about.

However, all of us have rights under the law, and we are guaranteed equal protection from these laws in which the amendment takes its own course. In a society as diverse as America, every person has his own culture, his own persona, and his own individuality that has to be taken into account in which diversity anchors, but where sometimes stereotypes arise from, too. 

Protests that turn to violent assemblies have been witnessed all over, and looting is superfluous in what is being peddled around. Businesses have their own rights, as much as citizens have their own rights. Democracy cradles in competing interests, and that is why we have law and order. All of us have the right to live peacefully, and to be allowed the ultimate goal for the pursuit of happiness. Sometimes, we all have to fight hard for it. But we are all entitled to it, nonetheless.

As the second US President and founding father John Adams once said: "We are a government of laws, and not of men."

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The editorial is sponsored by HSBC.