Lam: No to rioters’demands
HONG KONG: Carrie Lam, the chief executive of this island state, on Tuesday again ruled out further concessions to protesters who marched peacefully in their hundreds of thousands this past weekend.
The six-month protest movement has five demands, including that Hong Kong’s leader and lawmakers all be directly elected and that police actions against protesters be independently investigated.
The only demand that has been met was the withdrawal of the proposed extradition legislation that triggered the movement in June. But leader Carrie Lam made clear she won’t budge on the others.
“As for other demands, we really have to stick by certain important principles,” she said.
“If a particular demand requires us to deviate from the law, not to
uphold the rule of law in Hong Kong, or to do things actually beyond the powers of the chief executive, I could not agree to accept those demands.”
One of the protest movement’s demands is amnesty for the more than 6,000 people arrested. Lam said that wasn’t legally possible.
Lam argued that an amnesty for those arrested — more than 6,000 people since June, 40 percent of them students — would violate the spirit of the rule of law.
“How can we completely ignore the rule of law just to fulfil the demands... So, we have no way to make the response, but we are still willing to examine the social problems reflected by this incident in hope of relieving residents’ grievance,” she added.
Lam said she would give a “full account” of what has happened in the city when she goes to Beijing on Saturday for her regular duty visit, which typically involves a meeting with President Xi Jinping.
In late November, the city’s pro- democracy camp won a landslide victory in local elections, which critics described as a referendum for the movement, but Lam and her government remained unrattled.
The movement has upended the semi- autonomous Chinese hub’s reputation for stability and blanketed its streets with unprecedented scenes of political violence.
Despite a lull in clashes in the past two weeks, tension bubbled under the surface as police defused two improvised mail bombs discovered near a school and seized firearms including a pistol during overnight raids.
The protest march Sunday on Hong Kong Island was one of the biggest since the mass demonstrations started against the now-withdrawn bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited for trial in Communist Party-controlled courts in mainland China.
Organizers estimated that 800,000 people joined the rally. Protesters chanted “Five demands, not one less!” and held up five fingers.
Lam said the march “reflects the freedoms that Hong Kong people are enjoying” and showed that “all those accusations from various quarters that we are eroding people’s freedoms are unsubstantiated.”