Senin, 10 Juni 2019

Hong Kong will not withdraw extradition bill: Carrie Lam - Aljazeera.com

Hong Kong's pro-Beijing leader said on Monday she had no plans to withdraw a controversial plan to allow extraditions to the Chinese mainland, a day after an estimated one million people marched to oppose the proposal.

"This is a very important piece of legislation that will help to uphold justice and also ensure that Hong Kong will fulfil her international obligations in terms of cross-boundary and transnational crimes," Chief Executive Carrie Lam told reporters.

Al Jazeera's Adrian Brown, reporting from Beijing, said: "In the face of the protests, in the face of all her critics, Carrie Lam remains undeterred".

"It's pretty clear she is not going to shelve this controversial bill that has caused so much alarm and agitation in Hong Kong.

"She says the bill is necessary and sensible and that is also the view of the government here in Beijing," Brown said.

Riot police surrounded Hong Kong's parliament on Monday after a mass rally descended into violence as several hundred protesters clashed with police, who responded with pepper spray before the standoff ended.

The protests plunged Hong Kong into a new political crisis, heaping pressure on Lam's administration and her official backers in Beijing. Veteran legislators have called on her to resign.

Hong Kongers Protest Over China Extradition Law

Organisers claimed more than a million people marched on Sunday against the proposed bill [Anthony Kwan/Getty Images]

The semi-autonomous city's government is pushing a bill through the legislature that would allow extraditions to any jurisdiction with which it does not already have a treaty - including mainland China.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam

Many in Hong Kong believe Lam to be a puppet of Beijing [Anthony Wallace/AFP] 

The proposals have sparked an outcry and birthed an opposition that unites a wide cross-section of the city, with opponents fearing the law would entangle people in China's opaque and politicised court system.

Protesters believe the proposed law would damage the city's rule of law and put many at risk of extradition to China for political crimes.

Public backlash

Sunday saw huge crowds march in blazing summer heat through the cramped streets of the financial hub's main island in a noisy, colourful demonstration calling on the government to scrap its planned extradition law.

Police estimated the crowd at 240,000, but organisers said more than one million took part in what appeared to be the biggest protest since 2003 - presenting Lam with a major political crisis.

But in her first comments since the mass rallies, Lam said she had no plans to change the current law's wording or withdraw it from the city's legislature.

"The bill will resume its second reading on the 12th June," she said.

Lam denied ignoring the huge public backlash and said her administration had already made major concessions to ensure the city's unique freedoms would be protected and that the bill's human rights safeguards met international standards.

"I and my team have not ignored any views expressed on this very important piece of legislation. We have been listening and listening very attentively," she said.

Protest to demand authorities scrap a proposed extradition bill with China, in Hong Kong

Demonstrators clash with riot police during the protest [Thomas Peter/Reuters]

But Al Jazeera's Brown said that many people are not convinced by Lam's arguments that there are sufficient safeguards in the new bill to address their concerns.

US and European officials have issued formal warnings, matching international business and human rights lobbies that fear the changes would dent Hong Kong's rule of law.

The former British colony was handed back to Chinese rule in 1997 amid guarantees of autonomy and various freedoms, including a separate legal system, which many diplomats and business leaders believe is the city's strongest remaining asset.

"It's a proposal, or a set of proposals, which strike a terrible blow ... against the rule of law, against Hong Kong's stability and security, against Hong Kong's position as a great international trading hub," the territory's last British Governor, Chris Patten, said on Thursday.

'Foreign forces'

Guards removed damaged barricades from the front of the Legislative Council building during Monday's morning rush hour and cleaning crews washed away protest debris.

All but one protester had been cleared from the area, with residents back to work as normal.

Hong Kong newspaper Mingpao said in an editorial the government should take the protesters seriously and that pushing the legislation forward would exacerbate tensions.

The official China Daily newspaper said in an editorial on Monday that "foreign forces" were trying to hurt China by creating chaos in Hong Kong.

"Any fair-minded person would deem the amendment bill a legitimate, sensible and reasonable piece of legislation that would strengthen Hong Kong's rule of law and deliver justice," the mainland paper said.

Amnesty International said the amended extradition law was a threat to human rights.

"If enacted, this law would extend the ability of the mainland authorities to target critics, human rights activists, journalists, NGO workers and anyone else in Hong Kong, much in the same way they do at home," it said in a statement.

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https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/06/hong-kong-withdraw-extradition-bill-carrie-lam-190610042120909.html

2019-06-10 06:54:00Z
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Minggu, 09 Juni 2019

Hong Kong march: Hundreds of thousands protest extradition bill - Vox.com

Hundreds of thousands of people — perhaps even more than 1 million — took to the streets of Hong Kong on Sunday to protest a government bill that would open the door to criminal extraditions to mainland China.

According to organizers, a total of 1.03 million people took part in the protests; if accurate, that would mean roughly one-seventh of the total population of the autonomous city-state took to the streets. A police spokesperson told Reuters that 240,000 were present at the “peak.”

Organizers said the turnout was the largest since the successful protest against a 2003 plan to amend national security law — 500,000 people attended that rally.

The crowd of protesters was diverse, and reflected the varied interests aligned against the extradition bill; it reportedly included teachers, businesspeople, drivers, students, and even young children.

Hong Kong protesters with child and signs.
Hong Kong protesters with child and signs.
Marcio Machado/Getty Images

“This law is dangerous, and not just for activists,” protester Lee Kin-long told the New York Times. “We are not activists. Even as regular citizens, we can’t stand to see China eroding away our freedom.”

Martin Lee, an activist who helped create Hong Kong’s Democratic Party told the Wall Street Journal, “This is the last fight for Hong Kong. The proposal is the most dangerous threat to our freedoms and way of life since the handover.”

College student Karen Chan told the Hong Kong Free Press she wasn’t sure the protests would make a difference, but felt she had to try: “I know it’s difficult to change the mind of the Hong Kong government, but I hope that the protest today can arouse some international concern about it through the power of mass media.”

The protesters carried signs calling for the resignation of Carrie Lam, the city’s chief executive who has advocated for the extradition bill, and wore white, to symbolize “light” and “justice.” Some also carried umbrellas, which became a symbol of the Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement during 2014 protests.

Protesters walk through Hong Kong with signs and yellow umbrellas.
Protesters walk through Hong Kong with signs and umbrellas.
Marcio Machado/Getty Images

While the march was mostly peaceful, the BBC reports that pepper spray has been used against some protesters. Just before Monday morning, some violence appeared to erupt near the city’s Legislative Council. Radio Television Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Free Press report that police used pepper spray and batons against protesters gathered near the legislative area. Protesters reportedly struck back by using metal barricades against officers and by throwing bottles. Students are said to have urged the protesters to leave the area as the police set up barriers and called in reinforcements. The midnight Legislative Council protest began as a peaceful sit in.

Hong Kong was once a British colony; following 150 years of British rule, the United Kingdom handed off control to the People’s Republic of China in 1997. Until 2047, Hong Kong is supposed to be able to govern itself under a policy known as “one country, two systems,” meaning the while Hong Kong is under Chinese sovereignty, it is supposed to be able to retain its own political and legal systems.

As Vox’s Alex Ward reports, the Chinese government has worked limit Hong Kong’s independence: “At China’s direction, the Hong Kong government in recent years has quashed the city’s democratic movement, blocked opposition candidates from running for elected office, and put down nearly all protest movements.”

The pressure Beijing has placed on Hong Kong’s leaders to pass new extradition legislation is the latest development in this ongoing trend.

The legislation, sponsored by Hong Kong’s current pro-Beijing government, would empower officials to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether to extradite wanted criminal suspects to stand trial in China itself. The bill would also require Hong Kong to extradite suspects to jurisdictions it lacks extraditions agreements with.

Government officials have promised the new law would not be used against people facing religious or political persecution, but Hongkongers fear China will not abide by that promise. They also worry citizens will suffer from arbitrary detention and point to allegations Chinese officials use enhanced interrogation techniques as a reason for caution. Businesspeople further fear that should the proposal become law, foreign interest in investment in Hong Kong will cool, and that some companies may even be forced to leave.

The Hong Kong government has partially answered these concerns by raising the threshold for potential extradition to crimes that carry penalties of seven years imprisonment or more, and has said anyone facing the death penalty would not be extradited.

Officials have also said extradition cases must first go through independent local judges, and then finally face approval by Hong Kong’s own chief executive. “We continue to listen to a wide cross-section of views and opinions and remain to open to suggestions on ways to improve the new regime,” a government official said.

In a separate statement, a government spokesperson said despite the protest, the bill will continue its path to becoming law on Wednesday, and said “most of those earlier concerns” expressed by protesters had been satisfied by the amendments made to the bill.

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https://www.vox.com/world/2019/6/9/18658650/hong-kong-protest-march-china-extradition-bill-2019

2019-06-09 17:56:23Z
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Beto and Bernie blast Trump for deal with Mexico and threatening tariffs - Fox News

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke mocked President Trump’s claims of victory in the recent deal reached with Mexico to avert his threatened tariffs – calling the president’s claims “overblown” and arguing that he has hurt the economic ties between Washington and its closest neighbor.

“I think the president has completely overblown what he purports to have achieved. These are agreements that Mexico had already made and, in some case, months ago,” the former congressman from Texas said on ABC’s “This Week.” “They might have accelerated the timetable, but by and large the president achieved nothing except to jeopardize the most important trading relationship that the United States of America has.”

In a series of tweets sent before departing for his golf club in Virginia, Trump defended the deal heading off the 5 percent tax on all Mexican goods that he had threatened to impose Monday, but warned Mexico that, "if for some unknown reason" cooperation fails, "we can always go back to our previous, very profitable, position of Tariffs."

TRUMP DEFENDS DEAL WITH MEXICO TO STEM MIGRANT FLOWS, PREVENT TARIFFS

The tweets came amid questions about just how much of the deal — announced with great fanfare Friday — was really new. It included a commitment from Mexico, for instance, to deploy its new National Guard to the country's southern border with Guatemala. Mexico, however, had already intended to do that before Trump's latest threat and had made that clear to U.S. officials.

The U.S. also hailed Mexico's agreement to embrace the expansion of a program implemented earlier this year under which some asylum-seekers are returned to Mexico as they wait out their cases. But U.S. officials had already been working to expand the program, which has already led to the return of about 10,000 to Mexico, without Mexico's public embrace.

Another 2020 candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, chastised Trump for using tariffs as a threat and operating a "trade policy based on tweets."

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"I think what the world is tired of and what I am tired of is a president who consistently goes to war, verbal war with our allies, whether it is Mexico, whether it is Canada," he said.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, however, insisted during an interview on “Fox News Sunday” that "all of it is new," including the agreement to dispatch around 6,000 National Guard troops — a move Mexico has described as an "acceleration."

"This is the first time we've heard anything like this kind of number of law enforcement being deployed in Mexico to address migration, not just at the southern border but also on the transportation routes to the northern border and in coordinated patrols in key areas along our southwest border," he said, adding that "people can disagree with the tactics" but that "Mexico came to the table with real proposals" that will be effective, if implemented.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/beto-and-bernie-blast-trump-for-deal-with-mexico-and-threatening-tariffs

2019-06-09 17:43:48Z
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Maduro Reopens Venezuelan Border With Colombia - NPR

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People line up to cross the Simon Bolivar international bridge from San Antonio del Tachira in Venezuela to Cucuta, in Colombia, to buy goods due to supplies shortage in their country. Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro ordered the reopening of the country's border with Colombia on Friday. SCHNEYDER MENDOZA/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

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SCHNEYDER MENDOZA/AFP/Getty Images

Crowds of Venezuelans lined up at two international bridges leading to Colombia on Saturday, as the border between the countries opened for the first time in four months.

Thousands of people crossed over, seeking food, medicine and basic supplies. For months, Venezuelans have been dealing with power outages, hyperinflation and increased violence due to the deepening political and economic crises in the country.

In a tweet announcing the move, Venezuela's authoritarian president Nicolás Maduro ordered the reopening of the border with Colombia on Friday and said in Spanish, "We are a people of peace who firmly defend our independence and self-determination."

The border with Colombia was closed earlier this year in an attempt by Maduro's government to block opposition and humanitarian groups from delivering foreign aid to Venezuelans in need. Venezuela's borders with Brazil and the island of Aruba were also closed.

Maduro is in a power struggle with opposition leader Juan Guaidó, the head of Venezuela's National Assembly who declared himself Venezuela's president in January. Guaidó has been recognized as Venezuela's rightful head of state by more than 50 countries, including the United States.

Maduro has been able to remain in power in part due to the loyalty of the military and support from powerful allies like China and Russia, the BBC reports.

In April, Guaidó led a failed attempt to oust Maduro. In a recent interview with NPR, he said most military officers do not support Maduro but fear reprisals should they be caught conspiring with the opposition.

"The main factor is fear, and we have to figure out a way to overcome the fear," Guaidó told NPR.

Recently, the two sides have entered into talks in Oslo, Norway, but they have not come away with significant results.

More than 4 million refugees and migrants have fled Venezuela since 2015, the U.N's refugee agency UNHCR and the International Organization for Migration announced on Friday. In the seven months since November 2018, the number of refugees and migrants increased by 1 million.

Latin American countries are hosting the vast majority of Venezuelans, with Colombia accounting for around 1.3 million and Peru with some 768,000. Chile, Ecuador, Argentina and Brazil all are hosting more than 100,000, the U.N report says.

Enlarge this image

UNHCR's special envoy Angelina Jolie greets a group of Venezuelan migrants at an United Nations-run camp in Maicao, Colombia, on border with Venezuela. Jolie visited the camp to learn more about the conditions faced by migrants and refugees and raise awareness about their needs. Fernando Vergara/AP hide caption

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Fernando Vergara/AP

Actress and UNHCR's special envoy Angelina Jolie visited another part of the Colombia-Venezuela border to raise awareness about the needs of migrants and refugees on Saturday.

Jolie met with Colombian President Iván Duque and discussed the thousands of Venezuelan children living in Colombia who are at risk of being stateless.

Jolie appealed for more humanity and increased funding for the UNHCR in a statement about her visit:

"This is a life and death situation for millions of Venezuelans. But UNHCR has received only a fraction of the funds it needs, to do even the bare minimum to help them survive. The countries receiving them, like Colombia, are trying to manage an unmanageable situation with insufficient resources. But neither they nor humanitarian actors like UNHCR are getting the funds they need in order to keep the pace with the influx, and yet they still do everything they can."

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https://www.npr.org/2019/06/09/731070141/after-4-months-venezuelas-border-with-colombia-reopens

2019-06-09 16:48:00Z
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Hong Kong protest draws hundreds of thousands over extradition bill - Fox News

Several hundred thousand people took to the streets in Hong Kong on Sunday to protest a new extradition law that would allow China to extradite suspects from the autonomous territory to face charges in mainland China.

The organizers say more than 500,000 people showed up, with the protesters wearing all white and chanting "step down" and "shelve the evil law."

The massive protest Sunday is occurring three days before Hong Kong's government plans to win approval of the bill by the end of the month, according to Reuters.

HONG KONG LAWYERS PROTEST PROPOSED EXTRADITION LAW CHANGES

One protester had a sign that read “let’s make Hong Kong great again,” with a photo of President Trump firing Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who has the power to withdraw the bill.

Demonstrators hold signs during a protest to demand authorities scrap a proposed extradition bill with China, in Hong Kong, China June 9, 2019.

Demonstrators hold signs during a protest to demand authorities scrap a proposed extradition bill with China, in Hong Kong, China June 9, 2019. (REUTERS/Thomas Peter - RC12BF083720)

Those against the bill say the Chinese government could take anyone from Hong Kong for political reasons or for unintentional business offenses.

Foreign governments, including the U.S., have criticized the bill for fear it would impact Hong Kong's rule of law and financial markets, according to Reuters.

The city was a former British colony that was handed back to China in 1997 under the condition it would have a separate legal system. This bill could change that.

On Sunday, lawmakers and protesters put the pressure on Lam to withdraw the bill.

Protesters hold placards march in a rally against the proposed amendments to extradition law in Hong Kong, Sunday, June 9, 2019.  (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

Protesters hold placards march in a rally against the proposed amendments to extradition law in Hong Kong, Sunday, June 9, 2019.  (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

“She has to withdraw the bill and resign,” Democratic Party lawmaker James To said to crowds on Sunday night. “The whole of Hong Kong is against her.”

Hong Kong officials have defended the plans, saying the laws have safeguards, including local judges, who will see cases before approval by Lam.

THOUSANDS MARCH IN HONG KONG AGAINST EXTRADITION LAW

“We continue to listen to a wide cross-section of views and opinions and remain open to suggestions on ways to improve the new regime,” a government official said on Sunday.

Reuters says temperatures reached 90 degrees on Sunday and the protesters included families, workers and business executives, some of whom had never been to a protest before.

“I come here to fight,” said a wheelchair-bound, 78-year-old man surnamed Lai, who was among the first to arrive, according to Reuters.

Debates on the amendment to the bill begin on Wednesday, which could be passed into law by the end of June.

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A similar protest on the extradition bill occurred earlier this year in April, where over 100,000 showed up.

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https://www.foxnews.com/world/hundreds-of-thousands-of-protesters-march-in-hong-kong-over-extradition-bill

2019-06-09 15:05:21Z
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Massive Crowds Take to Streets in ‘Last Fight’ for Hong Kong - The Wall Street Journal

 
 
Some of the thousands of protesters take part in Sunday’s march against the proposed law that would allow Beijing to take people from Hong Kong to stand trial in mainland China.
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HONG KONG—Huge crowds of demonstrators packed the city’s streets Sunday to protest a proposed law that would allow Beijing to take people from Hong Kong to stand trial in mainland China.

The mass turnout—which organizers estimated at more than one million, or almost one for every seven residents in the city—represented the biggest challenge to Beijing’s authority over Hong Kong in years, rejecting the government’s attempts to push through legislation that critics say could be abused to target dissidents.

Protesters crowd Hong Kong’s Victoria park, the starting point of a march that snaked for more than a mile and a half through the global financial hub, to the legislature. Photo: Joyu Wang/The Wall Street Journal

The organizers’ estimate was double that of a rally in 2003 when they said half a million people protested against national-security legislation that was later withdrawn by the government. Police estimated the number at Sunday’s protest at 240,000.

The mass turnout, with crowds filling public parks and thronging roads up to six lanes wide for more than a mile and a half, heaps pressure on the city’s leaders and their political masters in Beijing to shelve the law. Unlike 2003, however, China’s ruling Communist Party under President Xi Jinping has in recent years taken a much stronger line against dissent in the former British colony.

“This is the last fight for Hong Kong,” said Martin Lee, a veteran opposition leader who founded the city’s Democratic Party. “The proposal is the most dangerous threat to our freedoms and way of life since the handover” of sovereignty, he said.

The proposed law, which would allow suspects to be extradited to mainland China for trial, has sparked anger in an unusually wide swath of the population, from teachers to lawyers and business leaders. The uniting fear is that the law, if passed, would expose citizens to the mainland’s more opaque legal system, where detainees could be subject to torture and other abuses of human rights.

Foreign business groups and diplomats have warned the proposal poses a threat to the rule of law that has helped Hong Kong prosper for decades as an international financial center, and which was guaranteed by China when it resumed sovereignty over the city from Britain in 1997. Opposition has grown even after the city’s leader, Carrie Lam watered down the bill slightly by removing offense categories liable to extradition from 46 to 37.

Police detain a demonstrator during the protest against Hong Kong’s controversial extradition bill. Photo: thomas peter/Reuters

Ms. Lam’s government has said fears about the law are unfounded and stressed that only those suspected of the most serious crimes would be subject to extradition. The government says there will be safeguards against abuse and that the law won’t damage the city’s business environment or relate to offenses of a political nature. China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the protests and their potential impact on the proposed extradition law. Phone and fax lines to China’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, which oversees Beijing’s policies to those territories, rang unanswered Sunday.

“ We need to defend our home for the next generation ”

—Kitty Wong, protester

Ms. Lam bypassed a lawmakers’ review committee to push the bill through for a second reading in the city’s legislature on June 12. The government has enough votes to pass the law within a few weeks, having used legal action to oust several democratically elected opposition legislators from office over the past two years.

Anger over the extradition has revived an opposition movement that had dwindled after street protests in 2014 paralyzed parts of the city for 79 days, but ended without achieving their goal of obtaining more democracy. Beijing’s influence over the city has grown since, while room for dissent has shrunk as the government has jailed protesters, declaring a pro-independence political party illegal and expelling a foreign journalist.

Families and church groups joined opposition activists, many dressed in white and holding red placards denouncing the law, as police were forced to close more roads and traffic lanes to enable the snaking mass of humanity to move.

Crowds were so massive that some train stations across the city were temporarily closed and protesters had to line up in sweltering heat to enter a local park, chanting slogans to oppose the law and cheering each other on taking to the streets to express their discontent.

The march stretched for more than a mile and a half through the heart of Hong Kong. Photo: tyrone siu/Reuters

“I needed to let my voice be heard,” said Kitty Wong, a 38-year-old teacher who joined a protest for the first time. Gesturing to her two children, ages 8 and 9, she said: “We need to defend our home for the next generation.”

Veteran activist Mr. Lee was on drafting committee of the Basic Law, the city’s mini constitution that enshrined people’s freedoms and rights until 2047. He said there was deliberately no extradition clause in the agreement because the two jurisdictions were too different. Beijing could extradite Hong Kong residents and foreigners on trumped-up charges, he said.

Write to Natasha Khan at natasha.khan@wsj.com

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/massive-crowds-take-to-streets-in-last-fight-for-hong-kong-11560075915

2019-06-09 14:46:00Z
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Trump says there’s more in Mexico deal - POLITICO

President Donald Trump

President Donald Trump attacked the news media in his defense of his deal with Mexico. | Alex Brandon/AP Photo

President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday morning that there is more to his agreement with Mexico than meets the eye.

“Importantly, some things..... .....not mentioned in yesterday press release, one in particular, were agreed upon. That will be announced at the appropriate time,“ the president wrote in a string of four tweets.

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Trump was defending his newly announced agreement with Mexico in the face of reporting that much of what was in the deal was not new. In his tweets, he directly attacked the New York Times and CNN, calling them “the Enemy of the People.“

While defending the agreement and saying he expected Mexico to be “very cooperative,“ the president said that he could always return to the threat of tariffs: “We can always go back to our previous, very profitable, position of Tariffs - But I don’t believe that will be necessary.“

Trump had threatened Mexico with a succession of higher tariffs in order to push the country to do more to keep migrants from El Salvador and other Central American countries from reaching the U.S. border.

Some critics have suggested that the deal with Mexico ended a verbal battle that was partly or entirely of the president’s own making. On CNN on Sunday morning, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Trump’s “erratic” policy was “not the way to go.”

“You can’t have a trade policy based on tweets,” the Vermont senator told host Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

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https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/09/trump-mexico-deal-twitter-1358158

2019-06-09 13:03:00Z
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