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TWO MILLION in the Streets
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Member, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 20,936 
https://www.wsj.com/articles/protesters-crowd-hong-kongs-streets-once-more-11560668928
By Natasha Khan, Joyu Wang and Wenxin Fan
Updated June 16, 2019 3:59 p.m. ET
HONG KONG—Protesters poured into this city’s streets for a second Sunday despite the suspension of a controversial bill to expand the government’s extradition powers, as a week of demonstrations appeared to be spiraling into a broader political movement.
The massive turnout, which organizers estimated at nearly two million, was the third mass demonstration in eight days. It was a rejection of a partial walkback by Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who a day earlier indefinitely suspended work on the bill, which would allow suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial, but stopped short of scrapping the proposal. Police estimated that 338,000 people had followed the official procession path. The sprawling nature of the protest made a precise count impossible.
Protesters chanted for the bill to be withdrawn and Mrs. Lam to step down.
The turmoil has thrown Hong Kong governance into crisis and threatens to spill over into problems for China’s central government in Beijing, which endorsed the proposal but had largely tried to distance itself from it. Fears over the law have grown into a mass defense of Hong Kong’s identity and the legal autonomy that preserves its culture and freedoms from those of mainland China.
Seven hours into the march, Mrs. Lam apologized to the Hong Kong people for mishandling the bill. She promised to accept criticism with sincerity and humility, and reiterated that there was no timeline for discussion of the controversial bill to restart. But she didn’t say she would withdraw the bill or step down. That didn’t placate march organizers, who encouraged supporters to join a series of smaller-scale events planned Monday, including strikes and a boycott of classes.
After the end of the march was officially declared at 11 p.m., some major roads outside government headquarters were occupied by thousands of protesters, though there was only a light police presence.
“The scale of the turnout is stunning. This is historic,” said Antony Dapiran, a lawyer and author of a book on dissent in the city. “This is Hong Kong coming out peacefully and en masse to give their response to what Lam had to say yesterday. They’re saying: No.”
The march followed a week of sporadic protests, including a day of clashes on Wednesday, when police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators, and a massive but largely peaceful rally against the bill by as many as a million people on June 9. On Saturday, a man fell to his death after attaching a banner protesting the extradition bill to a scaffold at Pacific Place mall, near the legislature.
Sunday’s protests were broad, with students joined by families pushing children in strollers and elderly in wheelchairs. Shouts of “Withdraw!” and “Step down!” rang on for hours as protesters marched and could be heard in nearby skyscrapers and residential buildings. Participants clogged major streets for more than a mile. Even hours after it began, protesters were still streaming to the starting point, filling streets more than half a mile away.
Protesters on Sunday wore black T-shirts to express outrage at the police response on Wednesday, as well as at Mrs. Lam, organizers said. Many carried white flowers to lay at the site along the march route where the man who had hung the banner died.
The march route was wider than a week ago, and crowds were so big marchers spilled in four other roads.
They also called for an apology from the police, who they say used a disproportionate amount of force to control crowds on Wednesday, and for those arrested in connection with Wednesday’s protests not to be prosecuted.
Others chanted, “No riot. Only tyranny,” objecting to the city’s classification of Wednesday’s demonstration as a riot. People held placards saying “students aren’t violent” and “don’t kill us.” At least 80 injuries were reported from Wednesday’s clash, with a few people requiring hospitalization.
Resistance to the bill reignited the opposition movement after a series of moves over the past two years to silence opposition and erode Hong Kong’s liberties. The pro-democracy camp was fractured and, many thought, broken.
“A generation that had been written off has spoken,” said Jason Y. Ng, convener of the Progressive Lawyers Group and author of several books on the political development of Hong Kong “People won’t take things lying down anymore when their freedoms are being threatened.”
While Wednesday’s demonstrations degenerated quickly into a series of running battles between police and protesters—an unusual scene in Hong Kong—Sunday’s march was peaceful and orderly, even though it was far larger. Crowds parted for a passing ambulance. A number of church groups sent contingents. Volunteers passed out signs, sports drinks and origami flowers. The Red Cross set up aid stations.
The bill they were protesting would allow suspected criminals to be taken across the border to mainland China, to stand trial in its more opaque judicial system, which many see as an encroachment on the legal and political autonomy granted Hong Kong under an arrangement known as “one country, two systems.”
The protest on June 9 was the biggest since China regained sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997, until this most recent one. Organizers said 1.03 million people attended then; police estimated the crowd size at 240,000.
Mrs. Lam’s announcements over the weekend represent a rare concession for the leader of this semiautonomous territory. Despite having previously expressed support for the bill, Chinese officials said the city’s government had proposed the law independently, a view Mrs. Lam repeated on Saturday.
By Natasha Khan, Joyu Wang and Wenxin Fan
Updated June 16, 2019 3:59 p.m. ET
HONG KONG—Protesters poured into this city’s streets for a second Sunday despite the suspension of a controversial bill to expand the government’s extradition powers, as a week of demonstrations appeared to be spiraling into a broader political movement.
The massive turnout, which organizers estimated at nearly two million, was the third mass demonstration in eight days. It was a rejection of a partial walkback by Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who a day earlier indefinitely suspended work on the bill, which would allow suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial, but stopped short of scrapping the proposal. Police estimated that 338,000 people had followed the official procession path. The sprawling nature of the protest made a precise count impossible.
Protesters chanted for the bill to be withdrawn and Mrs. Lam to step down.
The turmoil has thrown Hong Kong governance into crisis and threatens to spill over into problems for China’s central government in Beijing, which endorsed the proposal but had largely tried to distance itself from it. Fears over the law have grown into a mass defense of Hong Kong’s identity and the legal autonomy that preserves its culture and freedoms from those of mainland China.
Seven hours into the march, Mrs. Lam apologized to the Hong Kong people for mishandling the bill. She promised to accept criticism with sincerity and humility, and reiterated that there was no timeline for discussion of the controversial bill to restart. But she didn’t say she would withdraw the bill or step down. That didn’t placate march organizers, who encouraged supporters to join a series of smaller-scale events planned Monday, including strikes and a boycott of classes.
After the end of the march was officially declared at 11 p.m., some major roads outside government headquarters were occupied by thousands of protesters, though there was only a light police presence.
“The scale of the turnout is stunning. This is historic,” said Antony Dapiran, a lawyer and author of a book on dissent in the city. “This is Hong Kong coming out peacefully and en masse to give their response to what Lam had to say yesterday. They’re saying: No.”
The march followed a week of sporadic protests, including a day of clashes on Wednesday, when police fired tear gas and rubber bullets at demonstrators, and a massive but largely peaceful rally against the bill by as many as a million people on June 9. On Saturday, a man fell to his death after attaching a banner protesting the extradition bill to a scaffold at Pacific Place mall, near the legislature.
Sunday’s protests were broad, with students joined by families pushing children in strollers and elderly in wheelchairs. Shouts of “Withdraw!” and “Step down!” rang on for hours as protesters marched and could be heard in nearby skyscrapers and residential buildings. Participants clogged major streets for more than a mile. Even hours after it began, protesters were still streaming to the starting point, filling streets more than half a mile away.
Protesters on Sunday wore black T-shirts to express outrage at the police response on Wednesday, as well as at Mrs. Lam, organizers said. Many carried white flowers to lay at the site along the march route where the man who had hung the banner died.
The march route was wider than a week ago, and crowds were so big marchers spilled in four other roads.
They also called for an apology from the police, who they say used a disproportionate amount of force to control crowds on Wednesday, and for those arrested in connection with Wednesday’s protests not to be prosecuted.
Others chanted, “No riot. Only tyranny,” objecting to the city’s classification of Wednesday’s demonstration as a riot. People held placards saying “students aren’t violent” and “don’t kill us.” At least 80 injuries were reported from Wednesday’s clash, with a few people requiring hospitalization.
Resistance to the bill reignited the opposition movement after a series of moves over the past two years to silence opposition and erode Hong Kong’s liberties. The pro-democracy camp was fractured and, many thought, broken.
“A generation that had been written off has spoken,” said Jason Y. Ng, convener of the Progressive Lawyers Group and author of several books on the political development of Hong Kong “People won’t take things lying down anymore when their freedoms are being threatened.”
While Wednesday’s demonstrations degenerated quickly into a series of running battles between police and protesters—an unusual scene in Hong Kong—Sunday’s march was peaceful and orderly, even though it was far larger. Crowds parted for a passing ambulance. A number of church groups sent contingents. Volunteers passed out signs, sports drinks and origami flowers. The Red Cross set up aid stations.
The bill they were protesting would allow suspected criminals to be taken across the border to mainland China, to stand trial in its more opaque judicial system, which many see as an encroachment on the legal and political autonomy granted Hong Kong under an arrangement known as “one country, two systems.”
The protest on June 9 was the biggest since China regained sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997, until this most recent one. Organizers said 1.03 million people attended then; police estimated the crowd size at 240,000.
Mrs. Lam’s announcements over the weekend represent a rare concession for the leader of this semiautonomous territory. Despite having previously expressed support for the bill, Chinese officials said the city’s government had proposed the law independently, a view Mrs. Lam repeated on Saturday.
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