Human security and threats associated with the impacts of 2019 Hong Kong social unrest

Abstract

Hong Kong has just experienced unprecedented social unrest that started in 2019. The unrest dragged the city into a chaotic situation that had not been seen in the last 50 years. Violence and crimes occurred across every corner of the territory, affecting every citizen's livelihood. Several studies have been carried out, analyzing its social, economic, and political causes. However, most of them are limited to the political scope, and there is no profound work comprehensively reviewing and organizing the security impacts against citizens in Hong Kong. In that case, this article aims to fill up this missing gap by exploring its impacts on personal and community security that are adhered to the human security concept and framework. The article lists several critical personal and community insecurities and threats, which were respectively (1) group conflicts and increasing crime rate, (2) the legitimacy issue caused by the distrust among citizens and authorities, (3) psychological stresses that endanger public mental health and (4) violent political radicalization that could potentially trigger future hate crime and violent extremism. Thus it argued that the community stakeholders and government shall first mobilize their resources on handling these issues and shall introduce multipronged, peaceoriented and sustainable policies to handle them in a cost-effective and timely manner.