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Lawyer Michael Fisher wrote one of the top college textbooks on Hong Kong’s legal system in 2019, but it is no longer up to date.
Last year, China imposed a national security law on the territory, according to which one of its former students, from the years he taught at Hong Kong universities, had already been arrested.
“It simply came to our notice then [the book] two years ago, now it has to be completely rewritten, ”said Fisher.
The introduction of the foreshadowed security law radical changes in Hong Kong’s political and civil society with the aim of suppressing dissent and integrating the city more closely with the mainland following the 2019 anti-government protests.
Many Hong Kong businessmen still believed the changes would save the courts in the territory, which are based on the UK’s common law legal system and are seen as part of the city’s role as an international financial center.
But a year later, analysts say the law is rapidly undermining the city’s legal rules, such as the presumption of innocence and the right to bail in cases related to the security law. It is also shown that judges have less influence over these cases.
Trapped by the Beijing rubber stamp parliament and imposed in Hong Kong, the law broke the firewall that had separated the legal system from mainland China’s territory, allowing suspects to be tried for the first time at the border. His vaguely defined crimes, including subversion and collusion with foreign forces, can be punishable by life imprisonment. Critics say it threatens guaranteed liberties in Hong Kong in its surrender from the UK to China in 1997. Defendants under the law fear they may not be able to get a fair trial.
“The lowest fee for a one-day lawyer is HK $ 75,000 ($ 9,655),” the partner of a politician who was denied bail under the law told the Financial Times, explaining why the couple had not yet decided a lawyer despite a court close date. “[But] it will not make a difference anyway because the case is completely political. “
A total of 117 people have been arrested under the law, including a 15-year-old, while 64 have been charged, according to the Hong Kong Security Bureau. Many of them were denied bail.
In another break with the city’s common law tradition, a judge recently ruled in a security law-related case that there was no constitutional right to a jury trial.
No security law case has yet been concluded, but legal experts say preliminary rulings show that the judiciary only has so much power to mediate its impact.
“National security law makes it clear that it has paramount status,” said Bing Ling, a Chinese law expert at the University of Sydney.
Once unknown, Chinese media and state officials are also commenting more and more on Hong Kong legal cases.
When a judge briefly released pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai in December, China’s state media threatened Hong Kong’s judiciary that if it could not handle the case “properly,” mainland courts would take over. relief. After an appeal, Lai’s bail was revoked. He has since been jailed in Hong Kong on separate charges.
Analysts said the scope of policing also weighed on the legal system. A 37-year-old man was arrested last week for allegedly putting stickers out of the house that supported the protests.
“Many acts that were not previously treated as criminals, especially some forms of political expression, are now illegal,” said Ryan Mitchell, a law scholar at Hong Kong University in China.
Fears about the independence of the legal system escalated in September last year, when city leader Carrie Lam contradicted top judges to say there was no separation of powers in the territory between the executive, the power legislative and the judiciary.
For Beijing, legal system reforms were justified by the 2019 protests, which showed that the city’s “general legal order” had been “significantly undermined,” according to Han Zhu, a research professor at the University. of Hong Kong.
China believes that the legal system of the territory should place the country’s national constitution first, rather than Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the basic law, which guarantees rights such as freedom of expression. “He [security law] it is certainly not the end, but the beginning of the process of legal and political reconstruction, ”Zhu wrote.
According to reports, Zhou Qiang, chairman of the Supreme People’s Court of China, told the Hong Kong judiciary to “fully implement” a Chinese government policy to ensure that all officials in the city are patriotic. The FT revealed last month how pro-Beijing politicians had intervened in the appointment of a top Hong Kong judge, a process that was previously largely free of political interference. This has opened up a potential avenue for Beijing to more directly influence the selection of new judges.
For the Hong Kong judiciary, whose tradition of independence has long attracted multinationals who want to set up the Asia-Pacific headquarters in the city, the real process can only begin.
“Judicial independence is the key difference between Hong Kong and the mainland. . . and the most despised feature of Hong Kong by Beijing, ”Fisher said.
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