The Hong Kong Protests

With everything that is nowadays going on in the world, does anyone even remember the protests which shook with Hong Kong? Let's remind ourselves what exactly has happened. 

Hong Kong had been a British colony since 1842. In 1997, Great Britain handed Hong Kong back to China. It is a special administrative region, which means that it has separate governing and economic systems from the mainland of China. This special system is known as the principle of "one country, two systems".

This basically means that while the mainland of China uses the socialism with Chinese characteristics system, Hong Kong retains its own quite democratic economic and administrative systems - it has some autonomy and its people more rights.

Hong Kong's protests started in June 2019 against plans to allow extradition to mainland China. People in Hong Kong feared that these plans could undermine judicial independence, endanger dissidents and could also expose Hongkongers to unfair trials and violent treatments. They also argued that these plans would give China greater influence over Hong Kong and could be used to target activists and journalists.

Plans were withdrawn in September 2019 but demonstrations continued and demanded full democracy and an inquiry into police actions. Fights between police and activists became increasingly violent, with police firing live bullets and protesters attacking officers and throwing petrol bombs.

According to BBC, on October 1, 2019, while China was celebrating 70 years of Communist Party rule, Hong Kong experienced one of its most "violent and chaotic days". An 18 - year - old was shot in the chest with a bullet as protesters fought officers with poles, petrol bombs and other. Later, a policeman shot one protester at close range when activists were trying to set up a road block.

Even though, in that time protests supporting the Hong Kong movement spread across the globe, with rallies taking place in the UK, France, US, Canada and Australia, the situation in Hong Kong didn't get much better and the democracy is still being suppressed.

Written by Magda Routová

Source: The New York Times

Edited by B. Trnková