This extradition law has far reaching consequences against freedoms and the rule of law that locals have had until now. That's why there's so many people who normally don't mind Chinese geopolitical moves coming out into the streets compared to other protests like the umbrella movement.
Could someone explain how?
People of Hong Kong know it's a futile resistance, but they still have unbroken spirit and they show it. And that is commendable.
Currently HK has extradition treaties with 18 countries, but none with Macao, Taiwan, and mainland China.
On the face of it, it is rather odd that currently someone may be extradited from HK (a territory of the PR China) to, say the US, but not to mainland China.
It is understandable that people have reservations because of the judicial system in mainland China but this should ideally be dealt with by safeguards in the proposed bill.
To me it is a bit like arguing that someone in Puerto Rico should not face extradition to the US mainland.
That's why it's a question of integration. If HK were fully integrated with the PRC, requiring an extradition treaty at all would be strange. But it isn't integrated and the protesters evidently want to keep it that way.
I don't know how many Puerto Rican separatists there are, but they would probably oppose extradition to the United States.
It is not pro-democracy manifestation. West journalists are a democracy fanatics :/ Can some Chinese write what is really going on in Hong Kong?
Additionally, I have not seen this kind of worried articles about France protest and president Macron :/
Last but not least, I am sad that no one in my country and other European countries pretested when extradictions acts were signed with USA. Looks Hong Kongers are more proud. Good luck.
There were hundreds of articles all over the world covering the protests in France, much of it sympathetic to the protester's cause. You must know this, how did you find out about them if not from media coverage?
>no one in my country and other European countries pretested when extradictions acts were signed with USA
That is entirely and very obviously false. There were even public protests, and plenty of articles in the media objecting to the extradition of Julian Assange very recently. In fact in Europe it is not possible to extradite a person to the USA who might face the death penalty, and there are considerable concerns about the treatment of prisoners in the USA, so your specific call out of that issue shows this absolutely is a legitimate point for public concern and protest.
The pretext for this is that a Hong Kong resident is recently accused of murdering his girl friend in Taiwan. However this law would expose Taiwan citizens to extradition claims when visiting Hong Kong, so even they are against the law even though it would allow them to extradite the alleged murderer.
>Could someone explain how?
Because there is no such thing as Rule of Law in China. Not in any sense where people understands it. The First Rule of Law in China is Rule of the Party. And there is no system in place that overrules the party. Unlike in the west where there is also something to keep everything in check. The law can also be interrupted in anyway as the Party member wishes, even changing / scrapping it now and trace back all previous wrong doings.
This is fundamentally different to how Rule of Law works in the rest of the world and in Hong Kong.
I am not suggesting Rule of Laws works the same everywhere. But for most developed country, they are at least on the same order of magnitude, China is completely off the chart.
There is the rule of law in HK and, according to this bill, any extradition request will be examined by HK courts with the accused able to defend, in the same way as extradition requests from other countries.
Are you implying that Chinese courts will completely fabricate evidence and that HK courts will blindly rubber-stamp it?
More generally, it's not uncommon for Western countries to have extradition treaties with countries where the justice system is more than dubious, but somehow it does not seem that people are shipped over on these countries' whim.