Letters | If Hong Kong fugitives bill is whipping up paranoia, can the people be blamed?

I am sure that, if purely based on the allegedly violent deeds of Ray Wong Toi-yeung and Alan Li Tung-sing, the authorities in Germany would not have provided asylum to them. Not only must they have scrutinised the deeds of these two Hongkongers, but also the polices of the Hong Kong government in recent years, such as disqualifying Legislative Council members, declining to renew the work visa of a Financial Times journalist, as well as a proposed extradition bill that many fear will subject Hongkongers to the vagaries of the mainland judicial system.

Most people prefer to live in their hometown than to live in exile. To live in a foreign country is not as easy as we think. We can understand that through the lives of the artist Ai Weiwei, Liu Xia, wife of the late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo, and other dissidents who now live in exile.

In meeting with European Union delegates, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor dismissed their reservations. Chief Secretary Matthew Cheung Kin-chung seconded her and said the diplomats did not fully understand and were misled, labelling their fears “unfounded and unwarranted”.

Of course, the pro-Beijing people can point to the smooth running so far of the joint immigration checkpoint at the West Kowloon high-speed rail station, and say pan-democrats who raised fears of people being dragged across the border were just paranoid. But who can blame us for our communist phobia?