On Tuesday, massive anti-government protests in Hong Kong snarled operations at the city's airport, forcing the cancelation of outbound flights for the second consecutive day. Demonstrators swarmed ticketing desks and baggage-claim areas, making travel functionally impossible. Riot police briefly entered the building, and according to The New York Times, one officer drew a gun in an altercation with protestors but did not fire.

Some members of the assembled crowds began singing "Do You Hear the People Sing?" from Les Misérables—a response to the Chinese government's longstanding ban on the revolutionary anthem from music-streaming services.

The scene was just one in a months-long series of protests that have escalated dramatically of late. What began as a response to a seemingly innocuous piece of criminal justice legislation has become a de facto referendum on Hong Kong's rapidly disappearing autonomy from Beijing—and on the will of its residents to protect that autonomy from eroding any further.

What are the protesters protesting?

In February, Hong Kong's government began considering a bill designed to solve a very specific problem: In 2018, a 19-year-old Hong Kong man named Chan Tong-kai allegedly killed his pregnant girlfriend in Taiwan after an argument. He managed to return to Hong Kong before Taiwanese law enforcement officials could arrest him.

Ordinarily, Hong Kong law would allow the government to return a fugitive like Chan to the country seeking to prosecute him. Here, though, a quirk of the region's complicated history rendered authorities powerless to do so. Hong Kong is organized as a "special administrative region" of China, with a quasi-democratic government that operates separately from the mainland communist one. Because China does not recognize Taiwanese sovereignty—a cold war that dates to the Communist Revolution in the aftermath of World War II—it has no extradition treaty with Taiwan. Although Hong Kong maintains a more formal diplomatic relationship with Taiwan, the two have no formal extradition agreement, either.

Hong Kong, however, also has no extradition agreement with China. And the bill would allow Hong Kong's head of state, who holds the title of chief executive, to use their discretion to extradite people in Hong Kong to any jurisdiction with which the region has no extradition treaty. If enacted, this law would apply to Chan. But it would also, in theory, open up the possibility of extraditing Hong Kong residents to China, which has never happened in the more than two decades since reunification. Many residents fear the law could subject political dissidents and Communist Party critics to mainland China's notoriously opaque criminal justice system, which does not guarantee civil liberties to the same extent as Hong Kong's.

How did the protests begin?

A few smaller protests took place in the spring, but in June the bill prompted one of the most significant demonstrations in Hong Kong's history: Organizers claimed that nearly two million people participated in the march, while police estimated attendance at about 340,000. A general strike that same week forced many businesses to close their doors, from banks to schools to horse-racing betting branches. On several occasions, police clad in riot gear fired tear gas, rubber bullets, and beanbags at crowds after demonstrators allegedly threw bottles or other projectiles.

How did Hong Kong's government respond?

The current chief executive, Carrie Lam, suspended consideration of the bill shortly afterward and apologized to the public for the bill's clumsy rollout. Then, on July 9, she declared the proposal "dead"—but left open the possibility that the legislature, which is controlled by members of pro-Beijing political parties, would reconsider it later this year.