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Hundreds protest in Vancouver against Hong Kong extradition plans
VANCOUVER, June 10, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Hundreds of people protested outside
the Chinese consulate in Vancouver on Sunday against controversial plans to
allow extraditions from Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland.
“This amendment will affect millions of people, not just Hong Kong people
— people around the world,” Mabel Tung, the protest organizer and chair of
the Vancouver Society in Support of Democratic Movement, told AFP.
Tung, who immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong 40 years ago and has
advocated against human rights violations in China, is concerned that
activists like her would face the risk of extradition when transiting through
Hong Kong if the bill passes.
The demonstrators carried signs against the extradition law and yellow
umbrellas as a nod to the series of 2014 pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong
that are known as the “Umbrella Movement.”
Several protesters also held signs calling for the release of two
Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, who were detained in China
after the December arrest in Vancouver of Meng Wanzhou, a top executive with
Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.
Thousands of immigrants from Hong Kong settled in the Vancouver area in
the 1980s and 1990s because of uncertainties related to the handover of Hong
Kong’s governance from the Britain to China in 1997.
“We don’t want Hong Kong to become just another city in China, that people
have no freedom at all,” said Jeremy Cheng, a protester and immigrant to
Canada who left Hong Kong in 1997.
Jackie Law, a social work student from Hong Kong who is in Vancouver for
an internship, said the solidarity of protesters in Vancouver was “very
touching.”
“Even though they now stay in Vancouver with a stable life, they are
voicing out for Hong Kong people, which is very great to me,” she said.
BSS/AFP/MSY/0858 hrs