Since June of 2019, things in Hong Kong have been stirring with riots and protests all because of a murder that happened in their neighboring island, Taiwan.
According to Vox.com, it all started when a Hong Kong couple went on vacation to Taiwan and the man came back along without his pregnant girlfriend. A month later, he confessed to her murder, and that’s when the issues for Hong Kong government begins. Hong Kong and China are two completely different worlds, despite Hong Kong being a part of China. Hong Kong runs on a completely separate government that follows democracy.
“So you gotta go a little bit further back. Hong Kong became a part of the two state policy of China. Prior to that it was under the colonial influence of Great Britain. Under the agreement that Hong Kong is going to be somewhat under the umbrella of China. Hong Kong is a gold mine. There’s a ton of business there. There’s a lot of international business there. It’s a massive area in terms of international community, internal influence, and this relationship with China was also sort of challenging,” said government teacher Erin Wise.
When Great Britain gave Hong Kong back to China, the agreement was that China wouldn’t get any control over Hong Kong until the agreement expires in 2047. According to Vox.com, that’s why this murder is so significant. There are no laws in place where Hong Kong can extradite criminals to be tried in mainland China. This means that they had no way of trying the man who committed a murder on land owned by China. So the Hong Kong government wanted to be able to do that, coming up with a new bill that would allow for that to happen and the man would be tried for the murder.
The only problem is that Hong Kong citizens see this as giving more power to China over them. They see the bill as a violation of the agreement.
“That made many in Hong Kong worry that China was no longer abiding by these two China policies, and it began the riots which started in June and have not stopped since then,” Wise said.
The bill ended up not being passed by the Hong Kong government because of how popular it was. They did not want to make the citizens angrier; however, despite not passing the bill, the citizens are still angry because of how harsh police handled them during previous riots.
Now the Hong Kong government has yet another issue to deal with because the people will not stop fighting.
Also, in recent events, coronavirus has stuck Hong Kong and affected many, yet these citizens still put themselves at risk by going out to protest with a mask over their faces.
It is hard to say when the citizens will finally be satisfied with how their government has chosen to listen to them. But one thing is clear for the citizens in Hong Kong; they do not want to end up under China’s rule, and because of that, there should be many more riots expected to occur as their way of showing that they will fight to keep their freedom.