Hong Kong leader Lam says China extradition bill 'dead'

HONG KONG — Hong Kong's pro-Beijing leader Carrie Lam on Tuesday said a widely loathed proposal to allow extraditions to the Chinese mainland "is dead" -- but again stopped short of protester demands to withdraw the bill.

The finance hub has been plunged into its worst crisis in recent history following a month of huge marches as well as separate violent confrontations with police involving a minority of hardcore protesters. 

"There are still lingering doubts about the government's sincerity or worries (about) whether the government will restart the process with the Legislative Council," she said in a press conference.

"So I reiterate here, there is no such plan. The bill is dead."

The rallies were sparked by a now-suspended law that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China.

But they have since morphed into a wider movement calling for democratic reforms and a halt to sliding freedoms in the semi-autonomous territory.

Public anger has soared against the city's pro-Beijing leaders and its police force after officers used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters outside parliament last month. 

Lam has made very few public appearances in recent weeks.

But on Tuesday she resurfaced to hold a press conference in which she made her most conciliatory comments to date. 

She described her administration's attempt to introduce the extradition bill as "a complete failure", agreed to meet students in public without preconditions and said she recognised that the city was facing an unprecedented array of challenges. 

"I come to the conclusion that there are some fundamental and deep-seated problems in Hong Kong society," she said. 

"It could be economic problems, it could be livelihood issues, it could be political divisions in society," she said.

"So the first thing we should do is identify those fundamental issues and hopefully to find some solutions to move forward."

But she shied away from other key protester demands, including calls for an independent judge to head up a commission of inquiry into police tactics, saying the city's current police complaints mechanism was conducting its own investigation.

Lam had previously suspended debate on the extradition bill and said her administration had no plans to reintroduce it into the city's Legislative Council (LegCo).

But protesters remain distrustful and have demanded she unequivocally withdraw the proposed law from the parliamentary agenda. 

Lam said she did not think protesters would believe her if she used the word "withdraw"

"To some extent, if it was withdrawn today, it could be brought back to LegCo three months later," she said.

"But maybe the residents want to hear a very resolute and decisive saying. So 'the bill is dead' is a relatively resolute saying," she added.

source: philstar.com

Protesters control key roads after historic Hong Kong rally

HONG KONG, China — Holdout anti-government protesters remained in control of a major arterial road in Hong Kong on Monday a day after organizers said two million people flooded the streets in a historic rebuke of the city's pro-Beijing leader.

Vast crowds marched for hours in tropical heat on Sunday calling for the resignation of chief executive Carrie Lam, who has been forced to suspend a widely loathed bill that would have allowed extraditions to the Chinese mainland.

Critics fear the Beijing-backed law will entangle people in China's notoriously opaque and politicized courts and damage the city's reputation as a safe business hub.

Throngs of largely black-clad protesters snaked their way for miles through the streets to the city's parliament—with the organizers' estimate for the crowd size doubling an already record-breaking demonstration the previous Sunday in the city of 7.3 million.

The estimate has not been independently verified but if confirmed it would be the largest demonstration in Hong Kong's history.

Police, who historically give far lower estimates for political protests, said 338,000 people turned out at the demonstration's "peak" Sunday.

By Monday morning the crowds had dramatically dropped to just a few hundred largely young protesters occupying a major highway outside the city's parliament and some nearby streets.

Small lines of police, who had virtually disappeared the night before, were pleading with the protesters to go home but made no attempt to force them on.

Public rage

Opposition to the extradition bill has united an unusually wide cross-section of Hong Kong in recent weeks, from influential legal and business bodies to religious leaders.

And while the spark for the last week of protests has been the extradition bill, the movement has since morphed into the latest expression of public rage against both the city's leaders and Beijing.

Many Hong Kongers believe China's leaders are stamping down on the financial hub's unique freedoms and culture.

They point to the huge 2014 pro-democracy "Umbrella Movement" that failed to win any concessions, the imprisonment of protest leaders, the disqualification of popular lawmakers and the disappearance of Beijing-critical booksellers, as recent examples.

In recent years, the city's pro-Beijing leaders have successfully resisted bowing to pressure from large street protests led by the city's pro-democracy activists.

But the sheer size of the last week's crowds, and unprecedented violent clashes on Wednesday, has forced Lam into a major climbdown.

On Saturday she indefinitely suspended the unpopular extradition bill and apologised a day later for the attempt causing "conflict and disputes".

But the U-turn has done little to mollify protesters.

The Civil Human Rights Front, which is organizing the rallies, has called on Lam to resign, shelve the bill permanently and apologise for police using tear gas and rubber bullets on Wednesday. They have also demanded all charges be dropped against anyone arrested.

The violent crowd control measures on Wednesday, used by police as protesters tried to storm the city's parliament to stop the bill being debated, have proved enormously costly for Lam's government.

Political allies—and even Beijing—distanced themselves from her as public anger mounted.

"I think she has lost any remaining credibility or legitimacy to rule in Hong Kong because of her own mishandling of this whole affair," Charles Mok, a lawmaker, told RTHK Radio.

Joshua Wong to walk free

The massive rallies—which come 30 years after the Tiananmen crackdown—also create a huge headache for president Xi Jinping, the most authoritarian Chinese leader since Mao Zedong.

Under the 1997 handover deal signed with Britain, China agreed to allow Hong Kong to keep unique liberties such as freedom of speech and its hugely successful independent common law courts for 50 years.

But the huge crowds this week illustrate how many Hong Kong's 7.3 million inhabitants believe China is already reneging on that deal and fear further sliding freedoms as the city hurtles towards that 2047 deadline.

Protest leaders have called for a strike on Monday and renewed demonstrations.

One of the city's most prominent protest leaders is due to be released from prison later on Monday morning.

Joshua Wong, who became the poster child of the 2014 "Umbrella Movement" protests, will walk free at 10:30 am (0230 GMT), his political party said.

Wong, 22, was jailed in May for two months on a contempt charge after pleading guilty to obstructing the clearance of a major protest camp back in 2014.

It was not clear whether his early release was a gesture from the authorities or procedure.

A release on Monday would mean he will have served exactly half his sentence, a common policy in Hong Kong for prisoners who exhibit good behaviour.

Chinese state media remained largely silent about Sunday's historic rally, with social platforms scrubbed clean of any pictures or mentions of the rally.

source: philstar.com