- 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, 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.
It was a time when mass protests, violent clashes, tear gas, petrol bombs and the trashing of metro stations and businesses were beyond the thoughts of the city's 7.4 million residents.
Poon Hiu-wing, 20, never returned home from that trip to Taiwan. She was allegedly killed during the getaway by her boyfriend Chan Tong-kai, who was 19 years old.
After spending 19 months in custody on money-laundering charges, Chan was on Wednesday released from jail into a very different Hong Kong society " one that has grown accustomed to violent clashes between radical protesters and police, vandalism and widespread dissent.
Over the past four months, Hong Kong's streets have been turned into tear gas-filled battlefields, with groups of protesters regularly blocking major roads, hurling petrol bombs at police and into MTR stations, vandalising businesses they dislike and beating people who disagree with their ideas. The shocking scenes have been compared to the mayhem of the 1960s riots.
"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.
In April, it was revealed in court that Chan had said to police that Poon had told him the father of the baby was her former boyfriend and showed him a video of her having sex with another man. Agitated, Chan admitted to hitting Poon's head against the wall, strangled her from behind with both hands and struggled with her on the floor for around 10 minutes until she was dead. He then folded her body into the suitcase and dumped the body.
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.
Chan only served about six months of his jail term for good behaviour in prison, and after serving 13 months before his sentencing.
Chan's case brought to the attention of lawmakers and the public the fact that Hong Kong does not have an extradition deal with Taiwan " partly because of historical political friction between the Chinese Communist Party and its rival Nationalist Party.
In February this year, one year after Chan's arrest, Hong Kong's leader Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor moved in. Backed by her allies at the pro-Beijing party Democratic Alliance for Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, she presented what she called a remedy " a bill that would let Hong Kong send back criminal suspects to jurisdictions which the city had not struck an extradition deal, including Taiwan and notably mainland China.
"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 if 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."
Despite the escalating public furore over the proposed extradition bill, Lam stuck to her plan of pushing through the legislation by July, in time to "bring Chan Tong-kai to justice". The government even chose to bypass the regular procedure of allowing a Legislative Council bills committee to examine it " thereby avoiding opposition filibustering " and going direct to tabling in June.
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 abrupt 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 Poon 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 criticised Taipei for causing unreasonable delays. Eventually, on the eve of Chan's release, Taipei agreed to accept Chan.
Chan Wai-keung, political observer, said if Hong Kong could have convinced Chan Tong-kai 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 Ing-wen'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 had 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."
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