Hong Kong Protesters and Activists Say Withdrawal of Extradition Bill Is Too Little, Too Late

After Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam announced on Sept. 4 that the government would formally withdraw an extradition bill that has ignited the city’s largest-ever protest movement, protesters and pro-democracy activists alike said they would continue to advocate for all their demands to be heard.

Protests began in March but snowballed in June and have since evolved into a push for greater democracy for the city which reverted from British to Chinese rule in 1997.

The bill would have allowed Hong Kong citizens to be sent to mainland China to face trial in the Chinese Communist Party’s opaque legal system, drawing widespread concerns that critics of the Chinese regime would be punished with impunity.

Following Lam’s announcement, Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), the organizer behind recent protests that drew millions of participants, wrote on its Facebook page that Lam has made a “major political error” if she believed the current crisis could be resolved by her fulfilling just one of the five demands protesters have called for since June.