Hong Kong has made clear that it will move forward with its controversial extradition bill even after an estimated million people took to the streets in protest over the weekend.
Carrie Lam, Hong Kong’s chief executive, told reporters: “I have not received any instruction or mandate from Beijing to do this bill. We were doing it – and we are still doing it – out of clear conscience, and our commitment to Hong Kong.”
“Hong Kong has to move on; nobody wants Hong Kong to be a fugitive offenders’ haven,” she said.
The extradition bill, proposed in April, would enable Hong Kong to extradite fugitives, including foreign nationals, to mainland China for the first time.
It has drawn outcry from foreign envoys, lawmakers, human rights defenders and business groups who have raised fears it would erode rule of law in Hong Kong and leave individuals vulnerable to unfair trials. China’s ruling Communist Party exerts extensive influence over the courts, and human rights experts have pointed out how authorities extract forced confessions, use physical torture, and slap trumped up charges against critics.
A string of protests have also been staged in Hong Kong, with the largest turnout on Sunday when organisers say one million flooded the city and its public transport system. Police had a more conservative estimate, saying at its peak the crowds were around 240,000.
Demonstrators defied the thirty-degree heat to march to the city’s Legislative Council, waving banners that denounced the law and calling for Ms Lam’s resignation. To dispel protestors, police used batons and pepper spray to clear them from the city’s parliament.
“For Carrie Lam to push forward with these streets is an insult to the one million people who peacefully took to the streets on Sunday,” said Man-Kei Tam, director of Amnesty International in Hong Kong, an advocacy group.
Another protest has been called for Wednesday when Hong Kong’s Legislative Council is slated to hold the second reading of the bill.
On Monday, a state media editorial in Communist Party mouthpiece China Daily, denounced the protests, saying “foreign forces are seizing the opportunity to advance their own strategy to hurt China by trying to create havoc in Hong Kong.”
“Any fair-minded person would deem the amendment bill a legitimate, sensible and reasonable piece of legislation that would strengthen Hong Kong’s rule of law and deliver justice. Unfortunately some Hong residents have been hoodwinked.”
Hong Kong currently limits extraditions to jurisdictions with which it has existing extradition agreements or to others on an individual basis under a law passed more than two decades ago.
The territory has long enjoyed greater freedom and autonomy than mainland China, protected by an agreement meant to last 50 years when the former British colony was handed back to Beijing.
But recent changes have worried many that those freedoms are quickly disappearing. Since 2017, Beijing has pressured city authorities to squash dissent by expelling elected officials, jailing activists, and outlawing political parties. Events with dissident artists and writers have also been cancelled, and even politically outspoken professors have lost university contracts without explanation.
Fear is growing in Hong Kong that passing the extradition bill will make legal what mainland authorities have long done – kidnapping people it deems troublemakers even from across its borders.
In 2015, five booksellers linked to a Hong Kong shop that sold banned books were ‘disappeared’ from the city, and even from Thailand, later revealed to be detained in China.
Passing the extradition bill provides “the possibility to extradite far more people than you can abduct, because every time you abduct someone it causes an enormous fuss,” said Johnny Patterson, director of Hong Kong Watch, an advocacy group.
Essentially, it would be “a legal abduction,” he said, and that “gives China more legitimacy.”
