HONG KONG — Hong Kong residents braced for further political turmoil as the territory’s government prepared to send the legislature a widely opposed bill that would allow criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China. Without them, she said Hong Kong risks becoming a “fugitive offenders’ haven.”Supporters have pointed to the case of Chan Tong-kai, a Hong Kong man who admitted to Hong Kong police that he killed his girlfriend during a trip to Taiwan. Because Hong Kong and Taiwan don’t have an extradition agreement, he has not been sent to Taiwan to face charges there, though he has been jailed in Hong Kong on money laundering charges. The detention of several Hong Kong booksellers in late 2015 intensified worries about the erosion of Hong Kong’s rule of law. It was the first known case in recent years of a Western government accepting political refugees from Hong Kong.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer June 11, 2019 10:30 UTC