Opinion | Three reasons Hong Kong’s extradition bill should garner support from foreign governments

In the ensuing months, mass protests, calls for Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor to withdraw the bill or step down, and for the international community to intervene followed in quick succession. The campaign against the government’s plan to complete the legislative process within a tight time-table has morphed into the biggest challenge to the government’s authority and the viability of “one country, two systems” since the Occupy Central movement in late 2014.

For an administration unaccustomed to frontal and all-out attacks on its authority, the past few months have been a devastating experience. But for those who had gone through baptism by fire from the abortive attempt to introduce national security legislation in 2003, the campaign of fear mounted by the opposition is déjà vu, except that the old foes have returned with familiar and new tricks, and greater ferocity.

Back in 2002-03, although the national security bill provided abundant fodder for legal stalwarts to fasten on, legislators across the aisle played by the rules. Yet, on this occasion, the most senior legislator presiding over the election of the chairman of the bills committee, James To Kun-sun, exploited loopholes in existing rules to the full, with the result that the bills committee failed to elect a chairman after an unprecedented four hours of filibustering. A rival committee masterminded by pan-democratic legislators resulted in disgraceful melees in the Legislative Council on May 11 and 14, and the premature demise of the bills committee.

In 2002-3, the international community did not hesitate to voice its concerns over the national security bill. But the opponents to the fugitive offenders amendment bill have outdone their predecessors by making multiple visits to the United States, with superpower intervention reaching a crescendo at a meeting of the delegation led by former legislator Martin Lee Chu-ming with US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on May 17. Secretary Pompeo is said to have expressed grave concerns that the new bill might “threaten Hong Kong’s rule of law”.