Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Thursday that China “understands, respects and supports” her government’s move to formally withdraw an extradition bill, part of measures she hoped would help the city “move forward” from months of unrest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a press conference, Lam was repeatedly questioned on why it took her so long to withdraw the bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China despite increasingly violent protests, but she skirted the questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“It is not exactly correct to describe this as a change of mind,\u201d she said.She added that this full withdrawal of the bill was a decision made by her government with Beijing’s backing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Throughout the whole process, the Central People’s Government took the position that they understood why we have to do it. They respect my view, and they support me all the way,” said Lam, dressed in white and looking less tense than a televised appearance the day before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She withdrew the bill, which has plunged the Chinese-ruled territory into its worst political crisis in decades, on Wednesday.She also announced other measures including opening a platform for dialogue with society to try to address other deep-rooted economic, social and political problems that she said were contributing to the current impasse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The four other demands are: retraction of the word “riot” to describe rallies, release of all demonstrators, an independent inquiry into perceived police brutality and the right for Hong Kong people to choose their own leaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The official China Daily said on Thursday that the withdrawal of the bill was an olive branch that leaves demonstrators with no excuse to continue violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Skirmishes broke out in some districts including Po Lam late on Wednesday after Lam’s announcement, which came after a weekend of some of the most violent protests the city has seen in the past three months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Police said a suspected petrol bomb was hurled at a luxury property in Kowloon district in the early hours of Thursday and the suspects fled on a motorbike. Local newspaper Apple Daily said the house belonged to Jimmy Lai, the newspaper’s owner, who was in the property at the time. Pro-democracy publishing tycoon Lai is an outspoken critic of Beijing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bill was seen as the latest example of what many residents see as ever-tighter control by Beijing, despite the promise of autonomy.The former British colony was handed back to China in 1997 under a “one country, two systems” administration which gave the city of more than 7 million people more freedoms than mainland cities, such as an independent judiciary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said on Thursday that China “understands, respects and supports” her government’s move to formally withdraw an extradition bill, part of measures she hoped would help the city “move forward” from months of unrest. In a press conference, Lam was repeatedly questioned on why it took her so long to withdraw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":69769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69767"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69767\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69770,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69767\/revisions\/69770"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}