Thousands take to HK streets to protest new extradition laws
HONG KONG: Thousands of people marched on Hong Kong’s parliament yesterday to demand the scrapping of proposed extradition rules that would allow people to be sent to mainland China for trial – a move which some fear puts the city’s core freedoms at risk.
Opponents of the proposal fear further erosion of rights and legal protections in the free-wheeling financial hub – freedoms which were guaranteed under the city’s handover from British colonial rule to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. Early estimates suggested several thousand people had joined the march along Hong Kong Island from Causeway Bay to the council in the Admiralty business district.
Veteran Hong Kong activist and former legislator Leung Kwokhung said the government’s move risked removing Hong Kongers’ ‘freedom from fear’.
“Hong Kong people and visitors passing by Hong Kong will lose their right not to be extradited into mainland China. They would need to face an unjust legal system on the mainland,” he said.
Some younger marchers said they were worried about travelling to China after the move, which
Hong Kong people and visitors passing by Hong Kong will lose their right not to be extradited into mainland China. They would need to face an unjust legal system on the mainland. Leung Kwok-hung,Veteran Hong Kong activist and former legislator
comes just as the government encourages young people to deepen ties with the mainland and promotes Hong Kong’s links with southern China.
The peaceful marchers chanted demands for Hong Kong’s Executive Carrie Lam to step down, saying she had ‘betrayed’ Hong Kong. Some sported yellow umbrellas – the symbol of the Occupy civil disobedience movement that paralysed parts of Hong Kong for 11 weeks in 2014.
The proposed changes have sparked an unusually broad chorus of concern from international business elites to lawyers and rights’ groups and even some pro-establishment figures.
Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong who handed the city back to Chinese rule in 1997, described the move ‘as an assault on Hong Kong’s values, stability and security’, government-funded broadcaster RTHK reported.
Chief Executive Lam and other government officials are standing fast by their proposals, saying they are vital to plug longstanding loopholes.
Under the changes, the Hong Kong leader would have the right to order the extradition of wanted offenders to China, Macau and Taiwan as well as other countries not covered by Hong Kong’s existing extradition treaties.
As a safeguard such orders, to be issued case-by-case, could be challenged and appealed through the city’s vaunted legal system.
Government officials have said no-one at risk of the death penalty or torture or facing a political charge could be sent from Hong Kong. Under pressure from local business groups, they earlier exempted nine commercial crimes from the new provisions. — Reuters