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Hong Kong in Danger

Cho Hye-min

On April 3rd, 2019, the government of Hong Kong announced a new piece of legislation called the Hong
Kong Extradition Law1). This began the current round of protests in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong Extradition
Law forced the repatriation2) of criminals to China from other countries. The reason why the Hong Kong
government created this law was related to a case in Taiwan. A man and his girlfriend went to Taiwan for
travel, but the man got in trouble there when he killed his girlfriend. Hong Kong police arrested him, but
they couldn’t bring him to Hong Kong because Taiwan didn’t have any agreement about repatriation with
Hong Kong. Also, they didn’t have any legal right to punish him because the case hadn’t occured in Hong
Kong. Because of this case, the Hong Kong government felt the need to create a law to solve this problem
and decided to ahead with the Hong Kong Extradition Law. This law set up new rules for areas including
Taiwan, China, and Macao. When Hong Kong citizens learned about this law, they began to worry about the
abuse to come. The most worrying part of the law was that China could repatriate human rights activists
and anti-Chinese activists. In fact, China has repatriated anti-Chinese activists on the mainland. In 2015,
China brought five Hong Kong bookstore owners who sold books that criticized China to the mainland to
investigate them. This case was seen as kidnapping and has been criticized since. However, if the Hong
Kong extradition laws were passed, China's actions would be viewed as legal. Thus, Hong Kong citizens
have begun to oppose the law strongly through protests as democracy and freedom of expression are
likely to be violated.

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1) Hong Kong Extradition Law 홍콩 범죄인 인도법
2) repatriate 송환하다

54 MYEONG-SHIN GIRLS' HIGH SCHOOL