Since tons of severe events happened to our world, the news has become a part of our life. Every piece of news is all related to us. Therefore, we have produced a Podcast series that talks about the current events happening around the world. For our Podcasts, we will talk about different current events that involve our daily lives every week. Every news topic is important to us. In the first podcast episode, we will talk about the Hong Kong protest.
The protest began in April 2019. It began as the Hong Kong government planned to allow extradition to mainland China. This bill would have authorized criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China under certain circumstances. Many disapproved of this laid out bill, as they found it a risk to Hong Kong citizens as they would have unfair trials and violent treatment. Many have argued that this bill could give China greater influence over Hong Kong and could target at activists and journalists.
Why does this matter? This matters. Though Hong Kong is a special administrative region under the policy of “one country, two systems”, it still serves as one of the financial centers of mainland China. What happens next will seriously affect the economy in China. Hong Kong was a former British Colony which was handed back to China in 1997. Hong Kong is quite different from China as it has its own judicial rights such as freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and its own legal system. But these freedoms aren’t permanent as they will expire in 2047 which is twenty-seven years from now because of the Chinese government’s agreement with the British government signed in 1984.
The protest seems to be the biggest protest in the last twenty years in Hong Kong. It quickly caught the world’s attention and people started to comment about it. The time of the protest happened certainly related to the relationship between China and the United States. As the protest got worse, the relationship between these countries became fuzzy. As well, the trade war between China and the United States made the conflict escalate.
As protesters worry about the bill’s presence being revived, demonstrations continued to target the withdrawal of the bill. Brawls between the protesters and the police have begun to be more frequent and more violent. Protesters had conducted a plan to storm parliament, which was a success under their books and were set onto a new objective, which was to protest in the Hong Kong International Airport. This protest cancelled many flights to which many tourists were stranded. After a month of the conducted protest laid out in Hong Kong, the bill was finally withdrawn. Protesters stated, “too little too late”. From what the Hong Kong government has done, the protesters view this as a failure. This resulted in the protesters becoming more vicious than before. Many of the protesters decided to wear a mask while protesting to conceal their identity and to protect themselves against the tear gas and police brutality. Many have taken part in this movement by wearing a mask and posting it online. As to the result of this movement, the Hong Kong government wasn’t too pleased with what they saw.
A professional ESports player, Ng Wai Chung, was banned from the Hearthstone Grandmasters tournament from wearing goggles and a gas mask which was an allusion to the protests in Hong Kong. As his interview time was about to end, he shouted the popular protest slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our times”. From the perspective of the Hong Kong protesters, they want the following: the protesters not to be characterized as “rioters”, amnesty for arrested protesters, an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality, implementation of complete universal suffrage and lastly the withdrawal of the bill which has already been met. People in Hong Kong think they are using their right to get their freedom back. Yet, from the perspective of the Chinese citizens, they think it is all “chaos”.
We have been working on this topic for weeks. We are very interested in this topic because the news is important to young people like us. We have family members, and friends who live in or have visited Hong Kong recently. As students who are a part of the world, and we care about what happen to the world. We look at this issue from different perspectives.
We are the right people to do this story because we have good sources that can directly show what happened in Hong Kong without bias. As well, we can research thoroughly and can tell the true news from the fake ones.
Reference:
“The Hong Kong Protests Explained in 100 and 500 Words.” BBC News, BBC, 12 Nov. 2019, www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-49317695.
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