{"id":3270,"date":"2022-03-31T05:00:36","date_gmt":"2022-03-31T05:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linksus.net\/britain-withdraws-its-judges-from-hong-kongs-highest-court-the-washington-post\/"},"modified":"2022-03-31T05:00:36","modified_gmt":"2022-03-31T05:00:36","slug":"britain-withdraws-its-judges-from-hong-kongs-highest-court-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/2022\/03\/31\/britain-withdraws-its-judges-from-hong-kongs-highest-court-the-washington-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Britain withdraws its judges from Hong Kong's highest court – The Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

HONG KONG \u2014 Britain is withdrawing its judges from Hong Kong\u2019s highest court, citing a \u201ctipping point\u201d where the presence of its judges would \u201crisk legitimizing oppression,\u201d in a rebuke of the territory\u2019s claims that its courts are independent of political interference.
The withdrawal could have sweeping implications not only for those concerned about the erosion of rights and norms in Hong Kong\u2019s institutions, but also for the businesses that underpin its status as a financial center and set up base there for its predictable and trustworthy legal system.
\u201cWe have seen a systematic erosion of liberty and democracy in Hong Kong,\u201d said British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss in a statement Wednesday<\/a>. \u201cSince the National Security Law was imposed, authorities have cracked down on free speech, the free press and free association,\u201d she said, adding it was \u201cno longer tenable\u201d for her country\u2019s judges to sit on the court.
In a harshly worded response<\/a>, the Hong Kong government said the national security law was typical for any country seeking to defend itself and called the British move \u201cappalling.\u201d
\u201cWe take strong exception to the absurd and misleading accusations against the NSL and our legal system. Every country around the world would take threats to its national security extremely seriously,\u201d the statement said.
The opposition is in jail. Hong Kong authorities want its ‘patriots-only’ election to look legitimate.<\/a><\/span>
Two British judges were serving on the Court of Final Appeal, Hong Kong\u2019s highest court, before both resigned Wednesday, in tandem with the British government\u2019s announcement.
The Court of Final Appeal is composed of permanent judges and other nonpermanent judges that can come from any common law jurisdiction. Hong Kong, a former British colony, inherited the common law system, which it kept even after the 1997 handover to China under the \u201cone country, two systems\u201d framework.
Under that framework and Hong Kong\u2019s mini constitution, the courts are meant to be independent from political influence and mainland China, which has underpinned Hong Kong\u2019s appeal to foreign businesses.
Hong Kong under the \u201cone country, two systems\u201d framework had one of the most respected courts and judicial systems in Asia, seen to be free of interference, unlike the judicial system of the mainland. Hong Kong is a center for arbitration and home to many global law firms and top legal talent.
The withdrawal of the two British judges \u201care votes of no confidence to the whole political and legal environment after the national security law,\u201d said Eric Yan-ho Lai, the Hong Kong Law fellow at the Center for Asian Law in Georgetown University. \u201cBusiness groups would also read the move as an indicator of the integrity of Hong Kong\u2019s legal system now.\u201d
Common law jurisdictions include Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and judges from all of those countries have sat on the Court of Final Appeal as nonpermanent judges. An Australian judge quit the top court in September 2020<\/a>, citing the content of the national security law.
A handful of Australian and Canadian judges are now the only foreign judges left after the resignations Wednesday. The Canadian judge, former Supreme Court of Canada chief justice Beverley McLachlin, defended her decision to stay on in an interview with Canada\u2019s National Post in August<\/a>, calling the court \u201cthe last bastion perhaps of intact democracy\u201d in Hong Kong.
Lord Robert Reed, who is also the president of Britain\u2019s Supreme Court, said in a statement announcing his resignation Wednesday that the judges of the Supreme Court \u201ccannot continue to sit in Hong Kong without appearing to endorse an administration which has departed from values of political freedom, and freedom of expression.\u201d
Hong Kong was rocked by anti-government protests in 2019, sparked by fears that the legal firewall between the territory and mainland China was eroding through a bill that would allow extraditions between the two places. It spiraled into an all-out rebuke of China and Hong Kong\u2019s government. In 2020, China bypassed Hong Kong\u2019s legislature and passed a sweeping national security law that has since criminalized dissent and silenced and jailed the opposition.
The legal system has been a crucial part of this process, and judges now have to implement the China-drafted national security law, which, among other things, denies bail to suspects held on political crimes even before they are proven guilty. All of Hong Kong\u2019s most prominent activists, including media mogul Jimmy Lai, protest leader Joshua Wong and others, are in detention.
Letters from Hong Kong’s jails<\/a><\/span>
Jimmy Lai was denied bail by the Court of Final Appeal<\/a>, and that bail precedent has applied to the scores of other political activists and former lawmakers in custody. <\/b>Many of Hong Kong\u2019s key pro-democracy leaders \u2014 lawyers, LGBTQ activists, social workers and students among them \u2014 have been in detention for more than a year as their trial under the national security law drags on.
Britain\u2019s decision comes after months of lobbying from British parliamentarians and activists who have argued since the passage of the national security law that foreign judges have no place on the court. They argued that these judges could not act as moderating forces but were legitimizing the political repression there. Judges who oversee national security cases are handpicked, and they can be replaced after one-year terms.
\u201cFor too long, British judges have served as window dressing for the Chinese government\u2019s brutal crackdown on all forms of political opposition in Hong Kong,\u201d said Afzal Khan, a member of the British Parliament and of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. \u201cThis announcement is welcome and long overdue.\u201d
An earlier version of the article misspelled Afzal Khan’s name. This post has been corrected.<\/p>\n

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HONG KONG \u2014 Britain is withdrawing its judges from Hong Kong\u2019s highest court, citing a \u201ctipping point\u201d where the presence of its judges would \u201crisk legitimizing oppression,\u201d in a rebuke of the territory\u2019s claims that its courts are independent of political interference.The withdrawal could have sweeping implications not only for those concerned about the erosion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":869,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3270"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/869"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3270\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linksus2.linksus.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}