Hong Kong’s Leader, Yielding to Protests, Suspends Extradition Bill

HONG KONG — Backing down after days of huge street protests, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Carrie Lam, said on Saturday that she would indefinitely suspend a bill that would allow extraditions to mainland China.

It was a remarkable reversal for Mrs. Lam, the leader installed by Beijing in 2017, who had vowed to ensure the bill’s approval and tried to get it passed on an unusually short timetable, even as hundreds of thousands demonstrated against it this week.

City leaders hope that delaying the legislation will cool public anger and avoid more violence in the streets, said people with detailed knowledge of the government’s plans, including advisers to Mrs. Lam.

Mrs. Lam and her superiors in Beijing were reluctant to withdraw the bill outright, as the pro-democracy opposition has demanded. But they have no plans to make another push for it, the people said in interviews on Friday evening and Saturday morning. They insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the governments.

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