Some protesters have adopted the motto: "Five demands, not one less! The fifth demand, the withdrawal of the bill, has already been met.
In many cases, people supporting the demonstrators were confronted by pro-Beijing rallies. Chinese president Xi Jinping has warned against separatism, saying any attempt to divide China would end in "bodies smashed and bones ground to powder". Hong Kong is a former British colony handed back to China in It has its own judiciary and a separate legal system from mainland China.
Those rights include freedom of assembly and freedom of speech. But those freedoms - the Basic Law - expire in and it is not clear what Hong Kong's status will then be. The twists and turns in Hong Kong so far. The background you need on Hong Kong's protests. How is Hong Kong run? Hong Kong's young winners and the veterans they toppled. Image source, Getty Images. Clashes between police and protesters have grown increasingly violent. How did the protests escalate? What do the protesters want?
For the protests not to be characterised as a "riot" Amnesty for arrested protesters An independent inquiry into alleged police brutality Implementation of complete universal suffrage. What is Hong Kong's status? The protests began in June over plans - later put on ice, and finally withdrawn in September - that would have allowed extradition from Hong Kong to mainland China. They then spread to reflect wider demands for democratic reform, and an inquiry into alleged police brutality.
Now, China is proposing to introduce a new national security law, which critics believe could be used to crack down on rights and political activists. This is not all happening in a vacuum.
There's a lot of important context - some of it stretching back decades - that helps explain what is going on. It's important to remember that Hong Kong is significantly different from other Chinese cities. To understand this, you need to look at its history. It was a British colony for more than years - part of it, Hong Kong island, was ceded to the UK after a war in It became a busy trading port, and its economy took off in the s as it became a manufacturing hub.
The territory was also popular with migrants and dissidents fleeing instability, poverty or persecution in mainland China. Then, in the early s, as the deadline for the year-lease approached, Britain and China began talks on the future of Hong Kong - with the communist government in China arguing that all of Hong Kong should be returned to Chinese rule.
The two sides signed a treaty in that would see Hong Kong return to China in , under the principle of "one country, two systems". This meant that while becoming part of one country with China, Hong Kong would enjoy "a high degree of autonomy, except in foreign and defence affairs" for 50 years. As a result, Hong Kong has its own legal system and borders, and rights including freedom of assembly, free speech and freedom of the press are protected.
For example, it is one of the few places in Chinese territory where people can commemorate the Tiananmen Square crackdown, where the military opened fire on unarmed protesters in Beijing. Hong Kong still enjoys freedoms not seen in mainland China - but they are widely thought to be on the decline.
Rights groups have accused China of meddling in Hong Kong, citing examples such as legal rulings that have disqualified pro-democracy legislators, and the disappearance of five Hong Kong booksellers, and a tycoon - who all eventually re-emerged in custody in China. There are also accusations that press and academic freedoms have been deteriorating.
The public broadcaster RTHK has come under pressure from Hong Kong's government, first for broadcasting an interview with the World Health Organization about Taiwan, and then for targeting police in its satirical news show "Headliner". The local examinations body also came under fire for a world history question about relations between Japan and China, with the government demanding the exam question be invalidated.
The government said it was a professional, rather than political, decision, but many academics expressed concern. Not all the 70 members of the territory's lawmaking body, the Legislative Council, are directly chosen by Hong Kong's voters. Most seats not directly elected are occupied by pro-Beijing lawmakers. Some elected members have even been disbarred after Beijing issued a controversial legal ruling that effectively disqualified them.
Hong Kong's mini-constitution, the Basic Law , says that ultimately both the leader, and the Legislative Council, should be elected in a more democratic way - but there's been disagreement over what this should look like.
The Chinese government said in it would allow voters to choose their leaders from a list approved by a pro-Beijing committee, but critics called this a "sham democracy" and it was voted down in Hong Kong's legislature.
Nationwide, more than million pre-school to secondary school students were impacted by school closures, according to UN estimates. Beijing initially resisted a call for international investigation into the origin of the virus, punishing Australia, who initiated the call, by suspending a significant portion of beef imports from the country.
Authorities continued to crack down on a once-growing community of human right defenders, and increasingly targeted family members of activists. In March, Yunnan authorities forcibly disappeared artist and activist Wang Zang. In April, after being wrongfully imprisoned for four-and-a-half years, human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang was released from prison. Despite having tested negative repeatedly for Covid, authorities made him quarantine in his hometown before allowing him to return to Beijing and reunite—under guard— with his family.
It was revealed in January that a mainland student at the University of Minnesota was sentenced to six months in prison in November for tweets critical of President Xi he posted when he was in the US. In August, authorities shut down Bainu, the only Mongolian-language social media site in China after Mongolian speakers posted complaints on the site about a policy that replaced Mongolian with Mandarin Chinese as the language of instruction in some classes.
Existing Chinese law already requires that people can only practice five officially recognized religions in officially approved premises, and that the authorities have control over their personnel appointments, publications, finances, and seminary applications. Muslims reported increasing restrictions on Islam. In October, the Vatican renewed a two-year unpublished agreement with the Chinese government that allows both parties a say in appointing bishops in China, despite heightened religious persecution in China.
To combat Covid, Chinese tech giants developed an app known as the Health Code. Using unknown algorithms, the app generates one of three colors green, yellow, or red depending on a range of factors such as whether people have been to virus-hit areas.
Apps, products, and tools developed by Chinese tech companies raise the threat of Chinese government interference and surveillance, leading some foreign governments to impose broad restrictions that themselves raise human rights concerns.
This provision will disproportionately harm women, as three-quarters of divorces are initiated by women, including potentially endangering women experiencing domestic violence. In March, authorities in Inner Mongolia forced Ye Haiyan—an activist who has advocated for the rights of sex workers and victims of sexual harassment—to demolish the yurts she and her partner had built as rentals for travelers, cutting off a main source of their income.
In September, feminists and netizens were disappointed when a high-profile MeToo lawsuit ended with the top prosecutor clearing Bao Yuming, a lawyer and former executive at Chinese tech company ZTE, of charges of child rape by a woman who claimed to be his adopted daughter.
While China decriminalized homosexuality in , it lacks laws protecting people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, and same-sex partnerships are not legal.
In January, a court in Beijing ruled that it was illegal for an e-commerce company to fire a woman when she took a leave of absence for gender-affirming surgery. In June, a Zhejiang court accepted a case brought by a lesbian suing for custody and visitation rights of the children she had with her former partner whom she had married in the United States. China ratified the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in However, persons with disabilities continue to face discrimination in areas including education and employment.
Only five students were able to access the Braille version of China's university entrance exam, an exam taken by more than 10 million students in July. Authorities across the country continued to harass and prosecute families with children who developed disabilities after receiving faulty vaccines. In January, authorities released He Fangmei, an activist for vaccine safety detained in March China continued to detain and forcibly return hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of North Korean refugees, thus violating its obligations as a party to the Refugee Convention.
The government refused to consider fleeing North Koreans as refugees, even though those returned have long been persecuted. Human Rights Watch considers North Koreans in China as refugees sur place, meaning their arrival in China put them at risk if returned.
The US imposed some targeted sanctions on Chinese officials, agencies, and companies involved in abuses in those two regions, and the US Congress passed several new laws on a range of human rights concerns. However, despite sustained pressure from the European Parliament and civil society, divisions among EU member states have prevented the bloc from adopting robust measures such as targeted sanctions against the Chinese officials responsible for the crackdown.
Few governments in Muslim majority countries expressed concerns about abuses in Xinjiang.
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