After months of enormous street demonstrations here
in Hong Kong the chief executive of the city, Carrie Lam,
has formally withdrawn a piece of legislation,
a very controversial extradition bill,
that would have allowed criminal suspects here in Hong Kong
to be extradited up across the border into mainland China
to face Communist party controlled courts.
The government will formally withdraw the bill in order
to fully allay public concerns.
People here, organisers of the protests and demonstrators
themselves, are all saying that this is far too little too
late.
She's only met one of the five demands
that they've been making.
The other demands are for full universal suffrage
in Hong Kong, for a rescinding the label of rioting
for some of the demonstrations that we've
seen, amnesty for people who have been arrested so far,
and a fully independent inquiry into alleged police brutality.
As one of the organisers said publicly,
if you have a small fire a small bowl of water
may be sufficient to extinguish that fire.
However, once the fire reaches the proportions of the Amazon
fires that we're seeing at the moment that same bowl of water
is completely useless.
Lingering violence is damaging the very foundations
of our society, especially the rule of law.
The other concern people have is that
by acting now after weeks of increasingly violent protests,
Carrie Lam appears to be rewarding that violence rather
than acting when the peaceful protests of millions of people
were calling for these exact same things.
Every indication is that we will see further street protests
in the coming weeks and months.
And as these protests continue, the chances
that Beijing will intervene directly are rising over time.