Hong Kong Leader Caves: Orders Full Withdrawal of Extradition Bill

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced Wednesday that the government would fully withdraw the bill that launched the ongoing pro-democracy movement from the legislature, ceding to one of the five demands protesters have been posing to the government for the past three months.

The bill in question would have allowed the Communist Party of China to extradite anyone present in Hong Kong, not just Hong Kong residents or Chinese citizens, into the Chinese prison system if accused of violating communist “crimes.” China has notoriously “disappeared” thousands of political dissidents into its prison system and severely restricts free speech and religious activity. Multiple investigations have found that China uses its political prisoners as forced organ donors, cutting them open and taking their organs alive to fuel a million-dollar industry.

Hong Kong residents naturally feared that exercising their rights to speech, assembly, or religion in what is ostensibly a free territory would result in being the victims of gross human rights violations and took to the streets this June.