Months of Hong Kong protests started with a murder. Will suspected killer’s return to Taiwan end it?
- Poon Hiu-wing never returned home from her trip to Taiwan with her boyfriend Chan Tong-kai in February 2018
- Chief Executive Carrie Lam tried to have him sent back to Taiwan by introducing an extradition bill, but her plan instead gave rise to mass protests and violent clashes
Be it the butterfly effect or a black swan event, Hong Kong’s current social unrest started with what should have been one couple’s romantic getaway to Taiwan for Valentine’s Day last year.
Poon Hiu-wing, 20, never returned home from that trip to Taiwan. She was killed during the getaway allegedly by her boyfriend Chan Tong-kai, who was 19 years old.
“I have disgraced all Hong Kong people,” Chan, now 20, was quoted as saying in a recent interview with Chinese-language weekly magazine Eastweek. “I hope Hong Kong can return to peace as soon as possible. I was so impulsive and did the wrong thing and have regretted it much.”
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When Chan returned to Hong Kong alone from the February 2018 trip, his girlfriend’s worried parents became suspicious and alerted Taiwan police. Poon’s decomposed body was later found in bushes near a subway station on the outskirts of Taipei a month later, and an autopsy showed she was three months’ pregnant when she died.
Chan has since been wanted in Taiwan in connection with Poon’s death, but instead remained in Hong Kong. Taiwanese authorities said they requested him to be returned, but received no response from the Hong Kong government.
Instead, Chan was arrested in March 2018 by Hong Kong police and charged with theft and money laundering for possessing stolen goods, including Poon’s bank card, camera, mobile phone and about NT$20,000 (HK$5,097) and HK$19,200 in cash. In April this year, he was sentenced to 29 months imprisonment.
For good behaviour while in prison, Chan only spent about six months in jail, having served the earlier 13 months in custody before his sentencing.
The case alerted lawmakers and the public to Hong Kong’s lack of an extradition deal with Taiwan – partly because of historical political friction between the Chinese Communist Party and its rival Nationalist Party.
“One wrong step brought a great fall,” said political affairs observer Chan Wai-keung, from the Hong Kong Community College of Polytechnic University.
“Carrie Lam thought she would collect political gains by fixing the issue. But she seemed to have overlooked the political risks.
“Many people doubt whether it is good to have a system that allows for people to be sent back to the mainland for trial. There is a genuine fear among the people, and Lam had only tried to justify her bid by Poon’s parents’ grief. It easily gave people an impression that she was a political opportunist.”
But opposition swelled. In March, 12,000 people took to the streets in protest against the bill, according to organisers the Civil Human Rights Front. In April, protest numbers jumped to 130,000. And on June 9, an estimated 1 million people joined the first mass rally.
But the government held firm, saying it would continue with the tabling of the bill to the legislature on June 12.
It was not until June 12, when protesters besieged and vandalised the Legislative Council complex, that the government adjourned the tabling of the bill. Lam then announced the suspension of the bill, but that did very little to quell the social unrest, with an estimated 2 million people turning out days later to demand the bill’s full withdrawal.
Weekly, if not daily, violence was unleashed across the city in the months following, eventually forcing Lam to fulfil one of the protesters’ five demands – the formal withdrawal of the extradition bill.
But it was seen as coming too late. Lam’s U-turn failed to stop the violence, so her government adopted the tougher approach of invoking the emergency regulation ordinance to ban the use of face masks in all public rallies. The move provoked even more violence.
Since June 9, about 2,500 people have been arrested in connection with the unrest.
Last week Chan said he was willing to surrender to Taiwan after his release, admitting to making “an irretrievable mistake”.
“I realise that I was wrong and am willing to go to Taiwan to redeem my wrongdoing. I hope Mr and Mrs Poon can allow me a chance to make a fresh start in life,” he was quoted as saying in Eastweek.
But Taipei was initially reluctant to accept Chan, instead requesting formal talks with Hong Kong, which quickly accused Taipei of causing unreasonable delays. Eventually, on the eve of Chan’s release, Taipei agreed to accept Chan.
Chan Wai-keung, a political observer, said if Hong Kong could have convinced Chan to return to Taiwan, the city “could have been saved from the political turmoil of the past few months”.
Professor Lau Siu-kai, vice-chairman of Beijing’s semi-official think tank the Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macau Studies, criticised Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s handling of the issue, and said Hong Kong’s government could now breathe a sigh of relief.
“Tsai’s handling of the case has backfired. She has been seen to have politicised the case so much that it could reinforce the theory that Taiwan or other foreign forces have been behind the anti-government protests in Hong Kong,” Lau said.
“So, more people might switch to siding with calls for more effective measures to stop the violence.”