\nthe mainland, and says safeguards were in place to ensure dissidents or
\npolitical cases would not be accepted.
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/deshmediabd.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/25.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hong Kong was braced for another mass
\nrally Sunday as public anger seethed following unprecedented clashes between
\nprotesters and police over an extradition law, despite a climbdown by the
\ncity\u2019s embattled leader in suspending the bill.<\/p>\n
Organisers were hoping for another mammoth turnout as they vowed to keep
\npressure on chief executive Carrie Lam, who paused work on the hugely
\ndivisive bill Saturday after days of mounting pressure, saying she had
\nmisjudged the public mood.<\/p>\n
Critics fear the Beijing-backed law will tangle people up in China\u2019s
\nnotoriously opaque and politicised courts and damage the city\u2019s reputation as
\na safe business hub.<\/p>\n
The city was rocked by the worst political violence since its 1997 handover
\nto China on Wednesday as tens of thousands of protesters were dispersed by
\nriot police firing tear gas and rubber bullets.<\/p>\n
Lam stopped short of committing to permanently scrapping the proposal
\nSaturday and the concession was swiftly rejected by protest leaders, who
\ncalled on her to resign, permanently shelve the bill and apologise for police
\ntactics.<\/p>\n
Nearly 80 people were injured in this week\u2019s unrest, including 22 police
\nofficers, and one protester died late Saturday when he fell from a building
\nwhere he had been holding an hours-long anti-extradition protest.<\/p>\n
He had unfurled a banner saying: \u201cEntirely withdraw China extradition bill.
\nWe were not rioting. Released students and the injured\u201d.<\/p>\n
Flowers and written tributes were already beginning to pile up outside the
\nhigh-end Pacific Place mall, while demonstrators attending Sunday\u2019s rally
\nwere being urged to bring a flower to pay their respects and attend an
\nevening candlelit vigil.<\/p>\n
Suspending the bill has done little to defuse simmering public anger.<\/p>\n
Jimmy Sham, from the main protest group the Civil Human Rights Front,
\nlikened Lam\u2019s offer to a \u201cknife\u201d that had been plunged into the city.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s almost reached our heart. Now the government said they won\u2019t push it,
\nbut they also refuse to pull it out,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018Restore calm to the community\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n
On Sunday afternoon, protesters are set to march from a park on the main
\nisland to the city\u2019s parliament \u2014 a repeat of a massive rally a week earlier
\nthat organisers said more than a million people attended.<\/p>\n
Lam\u2019s decision to ignore that record-breaking turnout and press ahead with
\ntabling the bill for debate in the legislature on Wednesday then triggered
\nfresh protests, which brought key parts of the city to a standstill and led
\nto violent clashes with police.<\/p>\n
Opposition to the bill united an unusually wide cross-section of Hong Kong,
\nfrom influential legal and business bodies to religious leaders, as well as
\nWestern nations.<\/p>\n
The protest movement has morphed in recent days from one specifically aimed
\nat scrapping the extradition bill to a wider display of anger at Lam and
\nBeijing over years of sliding freedoms.<\/p>\n
A huge banner hanging from the city\u2019s Lion Rock mountain on Sunday read
\n\u201cDefend Hong Kong\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe remain an enclave of human rights and civil liberties at the footsteps
\nof a country whose leadership do not share our values or beliefs,\u201d lawmaker
\nDennis Kwok told local broadcaster RTHK ahead of Sunday\u2019s rally.<\/p>\n
Lam had been increasingly isolated in her support for the bill, with even
\npro-Beijing lawmakers distancing themselves from the extradition proposals in
\nrecent days.<\/p>\n
The Chinese government said suspending the bill was a good decision to
\n\u201clisten more widely to the views of the community and restore calm to the
\ncommunity as soon as possible\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2013 \u2018Keep the heat on\u2019 \u2013<\/p>\n
Critics were also angry that Lam missed repeated opportunities to apologise
\nfor what many saw as heavy-handed police tactics.<\/p>\n
Police said they had no choice but to use force to meet violent protesters
\nwho besieged their lines outside the city\u2019s parliament on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
But critics \u2014 including legal and rights groups \u2014 say officers used the
\nactions of a tiny group of violent protesters as an excuse to unleash a
\nsweeping crackdown on the predominantly young, peaceful protesters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pro-democracy group will not stop at this point, they want to build on
\nthe momentum against Carrie Lam,\u201d political analyst Willy Lam told AFP. \u201cThey
\nwill keep the heat on and ride the momentum.\u201d<\/p>\n
Protest leaders have called for police to drop charges against anyone
\narrested for rioting and other offences linked to Wednesday\u2019s clashes.<\/p>\n
Lam has argued that Hong Kong needs to reach an extradition agreement with
\nthe mainland, and says safeguards were in place to ensure dissidents or
\npolitical cases would not be accepted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hong Kong was braced for another mass rally Sunday as public anger seethed following unprecedented clashes between protesters and police over an extradition law, despite a climbdown by the city\u2019s embattled leader in suspending the bill. Organisers were hoping for another mammoth turnout as they vowed to keep pressure on chief executive Carrie Lam, who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4","category-14"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6265,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6263\/revisions\/6265"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deshnews24.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}