Hong Kong Leader Seeks Meeting With Students After Mass Protests

Taiwan’s Pro-Beijing Party Says ‘One Country, Two Systems’ Model is an ‘Utter Failure’

Taiwan’s main political parties have continued to express bipartisan support for the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, which have triggered renewed alarm over the threat posed by the Chinese regime’s on the self-ruled island. The pro-Beijing Kuomintang (KMT) issued a statement on July 2 expressing support for Hongkongers protesting an extradition bill that would allow people to be extradited to the mainland for trial. “In the past few weeks Hongkongers have marched to the streets multiple times and peacefully exercised their basic rights to assembly and protest, we hope that Hongkongers could continue their fight rationally,” the statement read. On July 1, over half a million people took part in a peaceful rally calling for the bill’s withdrawal. Later that day, a few hundred protesters stormed the city’s legislature, vandalizing…

HONG KONG—Hong Kong’s chief executive Carrie Lam has asked to meet with the city’s university students, her office said on July 4, as the embattled leader tries to fend off pressure from a month-long political crisis.

Protesters stormed the local parliament on the July 1 anniversary of the city’s return to Chinese rule. This followed mass demonstrations last month against Lam’s extradition bill, which critics fear could see Hong Kong citizens being sent for trial in the mainland.

Lam said she has paused efforts to push for the bill, but protesters say that stops short of a full withdrawal.

In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Lam said, “the Chief Executive has recently started inviting young people of different backgrounds for a meeting, including university students and young people who have participated in recent protests.”

The student union at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), one of the eight major higher education institutions, has turned down the offer to meet, saying that the city’s leader had requested a closed-door meeting.

“The dialogue must be open to all Hong Kong citizens to participate, and allow everybody the right to speak,” the union said in a statement published on Facebook.

Lam’s spokesperson said the chief executive hopes the HKUST student union will reconsider taking part in the meeting, which would be held in a “small-scale and closed-door manner” to facilitate an “in-depth and frank exchange of views.”

Students there repeated the opposition’s request in recent weeks to investigate alleged police brutality against protesters, whom they said Lam should stop labeling “rioters.” Introducing genuine universal suffrage was also on the list of demands.

Students at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, another of the eight higher education institutions, were also invited but have not yet decided, according to a source at the student union.

By Noah Sin, Felix Tam and Meg Shen

This article is from the Internet:Hong Kong Leader Seeks Meeting With Students After Mass Protests

UK PM Candidate Johnson Says He Backs Hong Kong People ‘Every Inch of the Way’

READING, England—Boris Johnson, who could be Britain’s prime minister by the end of the month, said he backed the people of Hong Kong every inch of the way and cautioned China that “one country, two systems” should not be cast aside. Britain has repeatedly pressed China to honor its commitment to protecting freedoms in Hong Kong after police fired tear gas to disperse protesters rallying in the former British colony against a now-suspended extradition bill. Hong Kong has been rocked by the largest protests in China since crowds demonstrated against the bloody suppression of pro-democracy activists in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in June 1989. “The people of Hong Kong are perfectly within their rights to be very skeptical, very anxious about proposals for extradition to the mainland that could…