Are there still viable paths to justice now that
The United Nations Human Rights Committee published its findings on Hong Kong together with Macao, Georgia, Ireland, Luxembourg and Uruguay yesterday after examining the implementation of civil and political rights in those territories. Minutes after they did so, political reporter Alvin Lum summed up the section for Hong Kong as follows: The "UN Human Rights Committee has called on Hong Kong to repeal National Security Law and sedition law in a strongly-worded report."
Some people gave the news a luke warm reception as they feel the time for action, not just words, is way overdue. A typical reaction on this end went along the lines of "A nice gesture but destined for the wastebasket. [The Chinese Communist Party] is impervious to UN and any other external pressure." Also, I'm sure many people would agree that Lap Gong Leong has a point when he stated that the committee "Should've said something BEFORE [China] passed the law".
However, certain legal authorities greeted the committee's findings for Hong Kong with much more emotion and enthusiasm than expected. For example, over on Twitter, the Executive Director of Georgetown Center for Asian Law (part of Georgetown University), Tom Kellogg, was moved stated [in Twitter speak which I've taken the liberty of deciphering) that: "In my 20-plus years of working on human rights in China, [the comitttee's Concluding Observations] are among the strongest I have seen from a UN body: The Committee directly calls on Hong Kong to repeal both the national security law and the sedition provision of the Crimes Ordinance, for example. A strong and clear statement on the need for immediate action.".
He concluded his eight Tweet thread with the following words: "The Committee should be commended for its robust and deep human rights analysis of Hong Kong's national security law, and for its clear call for the Hong Kong to live up to its International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights obligations. Hong Kong should act now to respond to the very real concerns expressed by the Committee".
Another Georgetown University legal scholar, Eric Yan-ho Lai, was moved to emphasize that the UN Human Rights Committee had produced a "Strong worded statement without ambiguity". He also Tweeted that the committee had made five demands:-
"1/Repeal the #NSL(#14,36)
Inevitably, people made the connection with the Hong Kong pro-democracy protestors' "Five demands, not one less"; with more than one person having noted that the last three of the UN Human Rights Committee's five demands listed by Eric Yan-ho Lai are remarkably like three of Hong Kong folks' "five demands, not one less".
Another legal mind who's weighed on the UN Human Rights Committee's Hong Kong report is Samuel Bickett. The following are some choice points from his substack piece on what he referred to as a "damning report on Hong Kong", in which he opted to "highlight a few key angles that I haven’t seen fully covered elsewhere":
1) [E]ven though the Committee surely knows that the national security law (NSL) is a Chinese national law, not a Hong Kong law, the report called on Hong Kong to stop enforcing the NSL, not China itself. Hong Kong has no authority to repeal the NSL [but it can] "refrain from applying” the NSL. This appears to be a
thinly-veiled call for the only Hong Kong body with the legal and
constitutional authority to invalidate the NSL — the Court of Final
Appeal — to use its power to do so.
2) Several commentators have already noted the apparently unprecedented reference in the report to the unjust imprisonment of barrister Chow Hang Tung on both NSL and non-NSL grounds... But while Chow is the only prisoner mentioned by name, the
Committee also specifically raised concerns in paragraph 15 about the sedition charges against several people for “clapping in court.” This case is, in my view, the most egregiously unlawful case we have
seen thus far from the National Security Bureau, and it is right for the
Committee to highlight it as representative of the absurd nature of
sedition arrests in Hong Kong.
3) The unfortunate reality is that the UNHRC has no authority to enforce
the treaty. All it can do is name and shame. But that does not mean
that this complex effort, which has taken the time of so many Hong Kong
activists over the last several months, has been in vain.
For one thing, it is critically important to create records of the deterioration of Hong Kong—for policy makers, for historians down the road, and for the city’s people. And a record from the UNHRC has more authority than most.
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