Pan Democrats Protest Planned Rendition Law

More than a dozen pan-democratic lawmakers and members of the Civil Human Rights Front staged a protest outside the Mong Kok Police Station against a proposed change to the current extradition law on Sunday, saying it will harm the 'one country, two systems' principle.

Currently, there's no extradition agreement between the SAR government and the central government, and officials say the amendments will close a loophole that came to light last year when a Hong Kong teenager returned from Taiwan after allegedly killing his pregnant girlfriend during a trip to Taipei. He remains in Hong Kong because the two places have no extradition agreement.

He could not be deported because two laws - the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance and the Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters Ordinance - do not apply to "other jurisdictions of the People's Republic of China".

Monday is the deadline for public submissions to the Security Bureau, but Civic Party lawmaker Alvin Yeung dismissed the public consultation as cosmetic.

"That is not a real consultation. All they're doing is uploading all the government documents online and asking the public to give comments. That is not a consultation," Yeung said.

The Chief Executive, Carrie Lam, has defended the planned law change, dismissing the concerns as "wild imagination".