Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam says the plan that ignited the revolt in her city wa...
HONG KONG - Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam says the plan that ignited the revolt in her city was born of a straightforward quest for justice.
A Reuters examination has found a far more complicated story. Officials in Beijing first began pushing for an extradition law two decades ago. This pressure to extend the arm of Chinese law into Hong Kong’s independent British-style legal system intensified in 2017, a year before the slaying and two years before Lam’s administration announced its extradition bill.
This account of how the extradition bill was launched, promoted and ultimately unraveled is based on more than 50 interviews with mainland officials, current and former Hong Kong government officials, members of Lam’s cabinet, associates and friends of the Hong Kong leader from her days as a student activist, and current and former lawmakers and police officers.
The city’s revolt has dealt a major setback to Xi Jinping, coming as he contends with a damaging trade war with the United States. And in a blow to China’s dreams of reunifying Taiwan with the mainland, the crisis appears to have boosted the popularity of Taiwan’s independence leaning President, Tsai Ing-wen, who faces the polls in January.
When she began studying at the University of Hong Kong, Lam intended to be a social worker. Lee Wing-tat, a former lawmaker from the pro-democracy camp, was a fellow student. He recalls Lam was an activist in those days, taking part in protests. A citation when she was awarded an honorary degree in 2013 described how Lam had campaigned for better treatment for poor Chinese fishing families from the British colonial government.
“At that time, Carrie was not so conservative,” Lee said. “She was a democrat. Just like me. After government, things changed.” Ho said he helped persuade Lam to become deputy to the city’s former leader, Leung Chun-ying, in 2012. She had planned to retire to spend more time with her mathematician husband and two sons, Ho said, but agreed to take the post because she felt she could continue to serve the city.
The publisher specialized in muckraking books on the private lives and business dealings of China’s top leadership, including Xi himself. It later emerged that two of the men had been kidnapped – one in Hong Kong, one from Thailand – and taken to the mainland. A third later detailed how he was grabbed by Chinese agents while visiting southern China and held captive for eight months. He fled to Taiwan this April as Lam’s government sought to ram through the extradition bill.
Then, in early 2017, came the brazen abduction of Xiao, the billionaire who was a target of the powerful anti-graft agency CCDI. A Hong Kong government official said Xiao had crossed the border with the mainland. The city was scandalized. Xi later praised Lam for her courage in taking on “difficult challenges,” after the two met in Beijing in December 2018, state media reported.
In answer to a written question from Starry Lee about the efforts to return the killer to Taipei, Secretary for Security John Lee said Hong Kong was studying how to handle the case. And he reminded her that under the law, the city was barred from sending suspects to any region of the People’s Republic of China. Hong Kong shares Beijing’s view that Taiwan is part of the PRC. Taiwan vehemently disagrees.
“Even though it’s been a year since my daughter was murdered, my husband and I can’t accept this reality,” Poon’s mother, Kui Yin-fun, said, sobbing. “I always think of this cold-blooded and cruel scene. How the murderer dragged a suitcase, and moved the corpse, and then left it in the open, so that wild dogs could eat it.”
That same week, a Legislative Council agenda included an item on judicial cooperation with Taiwan and “other places.” The next day, the government showed its hand, revealing in an official briefing note that to resolve the Poon case, it was proposing amendments that would remove the ban on extraditions to other parts of China. The ban, it said, had created “loopholes,” allowing the city to become a haven for criminals.
Chinese leaders publicly began throwing their weight behind the effort. In March, Chen Zhimin, a former vice minister of public security, linked the bill to Xi’s crackdown. He told Hong Kong public broadcaster RTHK a pact was needed because there were more than 300 fugitives on China’s wanted list hiding in the city. Chen also revealed that before he left his post in 2017, mainland officials had been discussing an extradition pact with their Hong Kong counterparts – including John Lee.
Chinese authorities didn’t respond to questions about the roles of Zhang, Chen and other top leaders. The protest had effectively shut down the legislature, however, preventing the second reading. Soon after, Lam crossed into the mainland and paid a call at Bauhinia Villa, a resort in the suburbs of Shenzhen where the Chinese leadership had set up a secret command center to manage the crisis.
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