HONG KONG (AP) — Hong Kong’s head of government, Carrie Lam, was again expelled from the legislative chamber due to opposition protests, following the violent attack on a leader of the protest movement started nearly five months ago. Pro-democracy lawmakers shouted and waved signs showing Lam with bloodstained hands, leading to security guards escorting her out of the room and Thursday’s session being suspended.
The day before, the protests prevented Lam from offering his annual speech in the chamber. He later broadcast it on television. The incidents at the Legislative Council and Wednesday night’s attack on Jimmy Sham by assailants armed with hammers and knives took a dramatic new turn in the protests that have rocked the city since June. Demonstrators and police have shown unprecedented levels of violence in the territory since Britain returned the excolony to the Chinese government in 1997.Before leaving, Lam reiterated that his “top priority” was to end the violence, which has affected the economy Hong Kong’s reputation as a secure and law-a-law financial center, with a sophisticated and independent judicial system. Lam said he was working with the 180,000 public officials and transport officials to reinstate order, although the task has been complicated by the public’s sympathies with the cause of the “troublemakers,” as he described the most demonstrators Active. However, she was forced to leave the room amid requests to resign. Pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo exclaimed, “Carrie Lam, you’re a liar.” Protests began in response to a withdrawal extradition law that would have allowed suspects of crime to be sent to China for trial in courts controlled by the ruling Communist Party.The movement then expanded to include broader claims of universal suffrage, an independent investigation into the methods used by police against protesters, and other demands such as no longer describing protesters as “rioters.” Sham has been one of the faces of the protest movement, as leader of the Civil Human Rights Front, which has organized large marches. Sham was on his way to an evening meeting in Kowloon district when four or five assailants assaulted him, leaving him conscious but with open wounds to the head, according to the front’s Facebook page. Mo and other lawmakers suggested Thursday that the attack on Sham could be designed to scare others and dissuade them from demonstrating, or even to give a pretext to the government to suspend the elections of district councillors scheduled for next month. Sham spent the night in the hospital, and it was believed that the injuries he suffered to his head and arm were not life-threatening, according to the state-owned network RTHK.
