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Hong Kong has a population of nearly 7.5 million people. Last Sunday (June 7) organizers reported that one million of them peacefully protested against a controversial extradition bill. As the protests continued and the government resisted, the protests changed. For now, the government has indefinitely suspended deliberations:
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam acquiesced, at least in part, to massive protests in the city this week as she announced Saturday the controversial extradition bill will be suspended indefinitely.
"The original urgency to pass the bill in this legislative year is perhaps no longer there," Lam said at a press conference. "After repeated internal deliberations over the last two days, I now announce that the government has decided to suspend the legislative amendment exercise."
[...] Thousands of mostly-young protesters shut down Hong Kong's Legislative Council complex and paralyzed parts of the semi-autonomous Chinese territory on Wednesday. Riot police fired multiple rounds of tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse the throngs of demonstrators, who hurled bottles, umbrellas and other objects at them.
At least 72 people were injured, including 22 police officers. Eleven people were arrested for disorderly conduct, unlawful assembly, assaulting officers and riot-related activities stemming from Wednesday's protests, authorities said.
Heavy rain prevented most organizers from carrying out fresh demonstrations the following day. Still, the president of the Legislative Council cancelled all planned sessions again Thursday and Friday, pushing debate on the bill to next week.
Under the extradition law amendment, any country -- including China -- could request the extradition of an individual to their home country from Hong Kong for trial. Many who oppose the proposed legislation fear that China could use it to arrest political dissidents.
Does any other country have such an open extradition policy?
[*] One million people represents over 13% of the population of Hong Kong. That is quite the protest! To get a protest of the same scale in the United States, you would need 18.5 million people: the combined populations of the four most-populated cities: New York, NY (8.4M), Los Angeles, CA(3.9M), Chicago, IL(2.7M), and Houston, TX(2.3M) plus #10 San Jose, CA (1M).
(Score: 4, Interesting) by jmorris on Monday June 17 2019, @04:37PM (2 children)
Everyone thinks the protesters won, that China backed down. Nah. They now have vast troves of data to sift, phone tracks, social media, etc. They will crunch the numbers, find the key nodes in the network of opposition, the 'troublemakers' and organizers. Then they will begin to vanish, deplatform, bankrupt, exile, etc. a few thousand of them. Then in a couple of years they will do it again and there won't be any opposition.
The fate of Hong Kong was sealed the moment the lease ended. China is just trying to preserve as much of the cash cow as possible. Because they are greedy Communists. The only winning move was, when all these things were just as obvious but the land was still British, to get the Hell out.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday June 18 2019, @02:16PM
That was pretty much my thought. This is an easy way to sift out dissidents and opposition leaders.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 19 2019, @12:49PM
Why didn't that happen already? They've already had a couple of decades to figure that stuff out . My take is that they got greedy and moved too fast - creating those nodes in the first place. They try again in a couple of years after playing those games, and they'll find that they create even more nodes.