VANCOUVER (Canada), June 10 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Hundreds of people protested outside the Chinese consulate in Vancouver 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, said.
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 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. — NNN-AGENCIES
