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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 17 2019, @07:33PM (1 child)
An example would be Chicago, with a population of 2.7 million and an estimated turnout at the first two Women's marches at 250,000 the first year (2017) and over 300,000 the second year (2018)[1]. This doesn't really mean 10% of Chicago turned out (9.25% and 11.11% respectively), because a bunch of people from the suburbs and surrounding communities showed up, but it was pretty impressive to see wall-to-wall throngs of people in EVERY street in the Loop and around Grant Park. Analogous to what happened in HK, and pretty amazing to see.
Had such a protest been aimed at the Mayor, instead of the Republicans in Washington, it would have tipped Chicago politics on its head, like a similar result has in HK. Of course, to have a similar impact at the federal level you would need 42 or 43 million on the streets, which is maybe achievable if dispersed around all our major and medium-sized cities, but nigh-unto impossible logistically if you want them all in one place, like, say, the Washington Mall.
[1]https://wgntv.com/2018/01/20/thousands-expected-for-chicago-womens-march/
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Monday June 17 2019, @08:18PM
It is possible to bring that many people together as evidenced by India's Kumbh Mela. [wikipedia.org], but they plan for it and there are still deaths due to problems associated with crowding: disease transmission and even stampeding. IIRC, Randall of XKCD fame did a "what if" that involved bringing the whole world together [xkcd.com] and it essentially destroyed civilization. LOL, I don't know if that would happen, but it would certainly be some kind of nightmare.
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