Protests continue despite ‘dead’ bill

HONG KONG — Hong Kong protest leaders opposed to the administration of Chief Executive Carrie Lam said Tuesday that they will continue their demonstrations, even after Lam declared the effort to amend a highly contentious extradition bill “dead.”

Protesters are persisting in their demands for the bill to be formally withdrawn and an investigation opened into heavyhanded tactics used by police against demonstrators. Hundreds of thousands have joined the monthlong protests, expressing growing concerns about the steady erosion of civil rights in the semiautonomous Chinese territory.

“We cannot find the word ‘dead’ in any of the laws in Hong Kong or in any legal proceedings in the Legislative Council,” protest leaders Jimmy Sham and Bonnie Leung said in statements in English and Cantonese.

“So how can the government tell us that we should preserve our rule of law, when (Lam) herself does not use the principle of the rule of law,” the two said.

The protest leaders also said Lam was being hypocritical in claiming to have met demonstrators’ demands without actually speaking to them directly.

“The young protesters have been out in the street outside her house, outside government headquarters, for weeks, roaring to be heard,” Leung said.

The protests against the proposed extradition legislation have given voice to fears that Hong Kong is losing the freedoms guaranteed to it when the former British colony was returned to China in 1997.