Demonstrators blocks key road and mass outside police headquarters in fourth protest in two weeks
Protestors in Hong Kong have blocked a key road through the city centre and massed outside police headquarters to demand the total withdrawal of a controversial extradition law, the release of detained activists and apologies for police brutality.
The protest on Friday is the fourth major demonstration in the city in less than two weeks.
Continue reading...Calls for new demonstrations come as government fails to respond to a list of protester demands
Hong Kong is braced for another round of demonstrations after the government failed to respond to a list of protester demands including an investigation into police brutality and the withdrawal of an extradition bill by a Thursday afternoon deadline.
After cut-off set by protest leaders passed without word from the government, messages began circulating on social media calling people to come to central Hong Kong from 7am on Friday.
Continue reading...Protesters have given authorities until Thursday afternoon to answer demands to retract extradition bill
Hong Kong is bracing for fresh rallies on Friday, which many fear could turn violent, as protesters gave city authorities until Thursday to meet their demands on the retraction of the city’s controversial extradition bill.
Anonymous messages have circulated on social media and messaging services calling for people to gather outside the government headquarters in the Admiralty business district to “escalate their actions” if the Hong Kong government fails to meet their demands by 5pm on Thursday. It called on people to strike, close shops and stay off school on Friday. On one popular chat platform alone, the message received nearly 89,000 “likes”. A user called this “Hong Kong’s last battle”.
Continue reading...Joshua Wong blames Hong Kong leader for city’s protests, despite her apology
Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, is the person responsible for mobilising the biggest protests in the city’s history, the freed student activist Joshua Wong has said.
The 22-year-old, who was the face of the last major demonstrations in Hong Kong in 2014, was released from jail on Monday following a two-month term for contempt of court.
Continue reading...Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, has offered a 'sincere and solemn' apology to the people of her city following record protests on Sunday in response to the controversial China extradition law. In her first press conference since crowds poured on to the streets to denounce Lam, the bureaucrat-turned-politician described going through an emotional period of 'self-reflection', and said she hoped to heal rifts in society. However, Lam refused to fully meet any of the protesters’ requests for her to resign, withdraw her extradition law, and apologise both for police brutality and for describing one protest as a riot
Continue reading...Beijing’s public support for Hong Kong leader likely hides private fury, but letting her go would be another humiliation
The most obvious casualty of Hong Kong’s extraordinary uprising against chief executive, Carrie Lam, and her campaign to tie the city more closely to China, will be the bureaucrat-turned-politician’s own career. If she stays on, it will only be as a lame duck leader.
But the city’s turmoil is also a major challenge to her boss and patron, Chinese president, Xi Jinping.
Continue reading...Calls for leader to stand down after estimated 2 million march over unpopular extradition bill
Protesters have kept up pressure on Hong Kong’s leader by blocking streets outside the shuttered legislature building and welcoming the city’s most prominent political activist, Joshua Wong, on his release from jail.
As the political crisis entered its second week, Hong Kong’s police chief admitted that his officers had sought to arrest wounded demonstrators in hospitals after a previous protest, but claimed criminal screening was routine for anyone arriving at A&E.
Continue reading...Crowds mourn the unknown activist, praising his passion and sense of justice
Many among the vast crowds that marched through Hong Kong on Sunday carried white flowers tributes to an anonymous man who had fallen to his death the previous evening after unfurling a large protest banner on scaffolding near government headquarters.
No one knew the man’s name, or why he was there, even though protesters and an opposition politician spent hours trying to persuade him to come down with hymns and exhortations.
Continue reading...Authorities urged to withdraw extradition bill as Carrie Lam apology fails to calm ire
A wave of protesters hundreds of thousands strong, most dressed in black and many carrying white flowers of mourning, have swept through central Hong Kong to denounce a controversial extradition law and demand the city’s leader, Carrie Lam, steps down.
They poured in from all over the city, in numbers so large that the march route had to be extended, and then widened, with crowds spilling from the main road to fill neighbouring streets, and halting all traffic outside government headquarters.
Continue reading...Protesters dressed in black have marched through central Hong Kong demanding a full retraction of the China extradition law. The huge new rally comes after Hong Kong's chief executive, Carrie Lam, announced an indefinite halt to the proposed bill, which would allow residents and visitors to be sent for trial in China’s opaque Communist-controlled court system
Continue reading...Tens of thousands of people dressed in black call for complete withdrawal of suspended bill
Continue reading...Chief executive adopts unapologetic, defensive tone and refuses to resign
Carrie Lam’s announcement that a controversial extradition bill had been suspended reinforced the Hong Kong chief executive’s reputation as a hard-nosed leader who can “put up a good fight”.
Throughout her press conference on Saturday, Lam adopted a resolute, unapologetic and defensive tone that her critics labelled arrogant and insincere.
Continue reading...Efforts to pass a controversial law in Hong Kong which would have allowed suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial have been indefinitely suspended, Carrie Lam announced on Saturday. The move followed a week of mass protests and street violence over the bill
Carrie Lam says legislation that would allow suspects to be sent to mainland China ‘caused a lot of division’
Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, has been forced into a humiliating concession after a week of mass protests, promising to indefinitely suspend efforts to pass a controversial new extradition law ahead of another demonstration that has been called for Sunday.
Lam’s announcement represented perhaps the most serious government climbdown in the face of public pressure since a security law was dropped in 2003, an important democratic moment for a city where people are free to demonstrate but not able to choose their leaders.
Continue reading...But for policies to be effective we must keep in mind how US actions affect the debate within China, where there is vigorous struggle over the country’s future
As the United States engages in an increasingly heated debate over policy towards China – the fight against Huawei, the trade war, talk of a new cold war – the protests in Hong Kong serve as a reminder that there are people in China who are concerned about the same things we are – basic rights, jobs, families.
In Hong Kong this week hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets to protest a proposed law that would enable the government to extradite Hong Kong citizens to the mainland – legislation perceived as legal cover for the Chinese Communist party (CCP) to jail those in Hong Kong advocating for their democratic rights.
Continue reading...China’s power grab via a new extradition bill must be opposed by governments around the world, especially Britain’s
It took something out of the ordinary to provoke a million people in Hong Kong to take to the streets to demonstrate against proposed new extradition rules. Roughly one-sixth of the population demonstrated peacefully: families, young and old, lawyers, academics, students, professionals and manual workers.
What caused such an outpouring against a piece of legislation? Quite simply, the people of Hong Kong – not British, but Hong Kong Chinese – have seen their government connive with the Communist regime in Beijing to undermine their way of life and freedoms.
Continue reading...Pro-Beijing politician also urges pause and diplomat distances China from law
The pressure of Hong Kong public opinion against a proposed extradition law appears to be causing cracks in the unity of pro-Beijing leaders after two senior figures called for the legislation to be delayed or dropped.
Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, has staked her authority on pushing through the legislation, vowing not to back down during a week in which protests have convulsed the city. She has compared demonstrators who were pelted with rubber bullets and teargas to spoilt children.
Continue reading...Demonstrations against the extradition bill follow a 50-year tradition of publicly challenging authority
In Hong Kong, people have most of the freedoms of a democracy except the right to choose their leaders. The city’s last British governor, Chris Patten, described it as a place that enjoyed “liberty without democracy”.
That has made protests particularly important as a political tool and an expression of Hong Kong identity. For more than half a century, the people of Hong Kong have been taking to the streets to force distant authorities – first in Britain and later in Beijing – to reconsider how they govern the city.
Continue reading...The ninth of June 2019 was a Sunday. Any other Sunday in summer at Causeway Bay, Hong Kong, old men and women would do their usual walkabouts and maids would gather, spread out groundsheets, cover them with spicy delicacies and listen to Filipino pop songs. But it was not like any other Sunday, at least not for me. Filled with anxiety, hope and anger, I joined the protest against Hong Kong’s proposed extradition law, alongside three classmates from my evening Spanish class. We were hopeful because perhaps there was a slim chance that our government would listen to us, for once. We were angry because our government had repeatedly lied to us.
Related: What are the Hong Kong protests about?
Continue reading...People urged to continue protests after day of violent clashes with police
Activists in Hong Kong have called for a march on Sunday and a boycott of work and classes on Monday in protest against an extradition bill that could result in suspects being sent to mainland China.
On Thursday, a day after a demonstration by thousands of people was violently cleared, a group of pro-democracy politicians and activists tried to march on the residence of Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, but were stopped by police.
Continue reading...