HONG KONG (AFP) ― Hundreds of protesters staged a rally in rain-hit Hong Kong on Saturday to urge the city’s government not to extradite former spy Edward Snowden, and slam the United States for its surveillance programs.
Snowden, 29, has gone to ground in the city after blowing the lid on the U.S.’s vast electronic surveillance operation and has vowed to fight any extradition request.
The city’s first major demonstration on the issue saw protesters, including pro-democracy lawmakers, activists and a large number of expatriates march to the U.S. consulate holding banners and shouting “Defend Free Speech,” “Protect Snowden,” “No Extradition” and “Respect Hong Kong Law.”
Many blew their whistles loudly and wore masks with Snowden’s face on it.
“Today we all blow the whistle,” shouted Tom Grundy, a British blogger and activist who lives in Hong Kong.
One protester held a sign of U.S. President Barack Obama’s famous ‘Hope’ poster, edited to show the leader as a spy wearing large headphones. Another sign read: “Betray Snowden, Betray freedom.”
The U.S. has launched a criminal investigation after Snowden, a former CIA technical assistant, leaked details of Washington’s secret Internet and telephone surveillance programs.
The protesters, made up of 27 civil society organizations, handed a letter over to the U.S. consulate addressed to Consul General Steve Young, which said:
“For many years, the U.S. State Department has publicly supported the cause of Internet freedom and criticized other governments for conducting cyber attacks, surveillance and censorship.
”We now understand, through recent revelations, that the U.S. government has been operating their own blanket surveillance systems and allegedly conducting cyber warfare against Hong Kong.
“This is a violation of Human Rights of people of Hong Kong and around the world.”
Snowden told the South China Morning Post newspaper earlier this week that there have been more than 61,000 NSA hacking operations globally, targeting powerful “network backbones” that can yield access to hundreds of thousands of individual computers.
There were hundreds of targets in mainland China and Hong Kong, Snowden was quoted as saying.
Hong Kong has a long-standing extradition treaty with the U.S., but Beijing has the potential to veto any ruling.
“We are going to see a lot of political juggling between two of the biggest powers in the world in order to possibly extradite Mr. Snowden,” lawmaker and Hong Kong entrepreneur Charles Mok told protesters.
koreaherald@heraldcorp.com
