Inside the Hong Kong Protest

People around the globe have watched as Hong Kong became ground zero of protests just 30 years after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

According to an article by Amy Gunia and Hillary Leungon Time.com, the protests took

off after Hong Kong’s leader, Carrie Lam, pushed forward with the controversial extradition bill.

The bill “would allow China to extradite fugitives from the semiautonomous region” of Hong Kong.

Since then Lam has withdrawn the bill but the protests have not stopped. According to an article in the

LA Times by Alice Su and Ryan Ho Kilpatrick, the protestors have four more demands that they want met.

“The others are an independent inquiry into alleged police brutality, amnesty for arrested protesters, the right of Hong Kong citizens to elect their own political leaders and a government edict against describing the protests as ‘riots’,” the article stated.

A protestor only known to the Pulse as “T” gave their opinion on the what was happening in Hong Kong since the initial protests.

“I think the protests are peaceful originally, but it changed into violent protests after the ignorance of the government,” said T. “I think that there’s a reason of doing that since the peaceful protests doesn’t, and all the protests start from the ignorance of the government.”

According to the protestor, they chose to get involved because of their views on what being a citizen of Hong Kong meant to them in the vision of democracy.

“I choose to get involved at the protests because that I, as a Hong Konger, has the responsibility to keep Hong Kong safe and democratic for our next generation,” said T. “We don’t want to live in horror and will be caught by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) any moment. We want freedom and democracy.”

T was open about his opinion on what was then five demands, especially about the difference of rioting versus protesting and the police.

“We are not rioting, we are protesting, there’s no such thing as riot, we didn’t kill anyone. Some police [are] against the law and law is higher than anything,” said T. “Therefore it is very reasonable to investigate the law-breaking policemen. We did nothing wrong so all protesters being arrests should be released.”

According to T, the government had not been giving them anything when it came to their demands about the police.

“We ask for an investigation on police abuse of power, no response. We have evidence of expired tear gas used, no response. The fact that police are beating up and arresting innocent people. No response,” said T. “What we get is a useless press conference everyday which is repeating the same thing every day. The police are completely misleading people and just lies.”

According to CNN, Lam has warned other countries not to interfere in the conflict.