The Hong Kong government has officially withdrawn the extradition bill, which led to massive protests and months of chaos in a special administrative region, Hong Kong security secretary John Lee said at a meeting in the Legislative Assembly on Wednesday.
Initially, this formal procedure was supposed to take place on October 16 after the parliament resumed work after the summer break. However, due to the chaos created by the opposition, the meeting was postponed.
Mass protests provoked by consideration of an amendment to the extradition law began in Hong Kong in June. The bottom line for her consideration was the murder of her girlfriend in Taiwan committed by a resident of Hong Kong. Due to the lack of an agreement on extradition, the suspect could not be extradited to the Taiwan authorities, and negotiating such an agreement was problematic, since the central government of China did not recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty.
To solve the problem, the Hong Kong government has proposed an amendment to the existing “Running Suspected Offenders Act.” The proposed mechanism would allow for the issuance of suspects by order of the head of the district administration to jurisdictions with which Hong Kong does not have an agreement, including mainland China.