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JAMIL ANDERLINI: After months of enormous street demonstrations here in Hong Kong, the chief executive of the city, Carrie Lam, has formally withdrawn a piece of legislation-- a very controversial extradition bill that would have allowed criminal suspects here in Hong Kong to be extradited up across the border into mainland China to face Communist Party controlled courts.
CARRIE LAM: The government will formally withdraw the bill in order to fully allay public concerns.
JAMIL ANDERLINI: People here, organisers of the protests and demonstrators themselves, are all saying that this is far too little too late. She's only met one of the five demands that they've been making. The other demands are for full universal suffrage in Hong Kong for rescinding the label of rioting for some of the demonstrations that we've seen, amnesty for people who have been arrested so far, and a fully independent inquiry into alleged police brutality. As one of the organisers said publicly, if you have a small fire, a small bowl of water may be sufficient to extinguish that fire. However, once the fire reaches the proportions of the Amazon fires that we're seeing at the moment, that same bowl of water is completely useless.
CARRIE LAM: Lingering violence is damaging the very foundations of our society, especially the rule of law.
JAMIL ANDERLINI: The other concern people have is that by acting now after weeks of increasingly violent protests, Carrie Lam appears to be rewarding that violence rather than acting when the peaceful protests of millions of people were calling for these exact same things. Every indication is that we will see further street protests in the coming weeks and months. And as these protests continue, the chances that Beijing will intervene directly are rising over time.
