The Hong Kong courts deal another blow to Jimmy Lai and rule in law in the territory

Remember when Apple Daily not only still existed, and people 

and businesses were buying copies of it -- and sometimes 

then given them away -- to show their support?
 

 "A Hong Kong court rejected an activist publisher’s latest effort Friday [i.e. yesterday] to use a British lawyer to defend him against national security charges as Beijing tries to crush a pro-democracy movement." The activist publisher in question of course being 75-year-old Jimmy Lai, the founder of the now-defunct pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily that was a thorn in the flesh of the authorities in Hong Kong and over in Mainland China for many years.

 

Jimmy Lai already is serving time in prison for a lesser offence that he was found guilty of last December and was already behind bars prior to that after being denied bail post being slapped with the national security law charges. He faces up to life in prison and a possible extradition to Mainland China if convicted under the national security law -- and pretty much everyone knows that's what his enemies dearly want to happen.       

 

In November, Hong Kong’s top court approved Lai hiring veteran lawyer Timothy Owen for the case, only to have the city’s national security authorities proceed to block that approval.  The political saga over Lai’s choice of lawyer is widely seen as part of the city’s crackdown on dissidents after the protests."

 

Yesterday's decision by the high court was not unexpected. But it still was upsetting nonetheless; this not least because the "explanations" that came for the decision laid bare how very powerful the national security law is.  As per the AP report: "Judge Jeremy Poon rejected Lai’s request to overturn the committee for safeguarding national security’s decision. Poon ruled courts have no jurisdiction over the committee under the security law." 

 

A reminder: this is the national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong on June 30th, 2020.  And this is the same national security law which "criminalizes acts of succession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign forces [which] has led to the arrests of many prominent democracy activists and damaged faith in the future of the international financial hub."

 

As for the ruling made by judge Poon -- to quote lawyer-activist Samuel Bickett: "If this ruling holds (and it probably will), the Hong Kong courts are abandoning all authority to review actions of the enormously powerful National Security Committee—no matter how arbitrary or extreme, no matter how obviously they violate Hong Kong law."

 

Also, another lawyer-activist, Kevin Yam, went through the ruling and singled out paragraph 61, which he proceeded to describe as follows: "it’s legal jargon for saying “Beijing didn’t overrule us, it’s just that Beijing put in all these things that we now can’t challenge and which would lead to a different outcome from us.” The Orwellian doublespeak of this..."

 

The repercussions of this for more than Jimmy Lai is made clear in by the Wall Street Journal editorial board in a five paragraph opinion piece entitled Hong Kong's Jimmy Lai Rules which pulled few punches and is so good that I figure it's worth quoting in its entirety:

A Hong Kong court ruled Friday that imprisoned newspaperman Jimmy Lai can’t hire the British lawyer he wants for his upcoming national security trial. That came the morning after Mr. Lai’s son Sebastian accepted the Cato Institute’s prestigious Milton Friedman Prize on behalf of his father in Washington. The two events tell the story of the erosion of the rule of law that made Hong Kong a world financial center. 

Sebastian Lai spoke movingly of the father he hasn’t seen in two years because the son may also face arbitrary arrest in Hong Kong. His family’s experience attests to how rights and freedoms that were fundamental to Hong Kong’s success have been eliminated.

The Communist Party hammer is the national-security law that China imposed on Hong Kong in 2020. Hong Kong’s national-security law that was pushed through over huge public protest. It is intended to trump other laws that get in the way of what authorities want to do, such as deny Mr. Lai his choice of lawyer. Now the government will be even freer to act because the High Court said national-security issues aren’t subject to normal judicial review. 

This is a blank check to a government not shy about locking people up. It came about because when Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee was embarrassed by three courts that sided with Mr. Lai, he took his case to China. In December Beijing ruled that the Committee for Safeguarding National Security—chaired by Mr. Lee—had the power to ban foreign lawyers in national-security cases...

This is more erosion in the rule of law since any national-security charge must already be heard by special judges. And it’s more evidence that the rights that investors once took for granted are no longer protected by Hong Kong law. By awarding Mr. Lai its Milton Friedman Prize, the Cato Institute reminds us that, if a prominent man like Jimmy Lai can have his business shut down and be imprisoned, no one is safe in Hong Kong.

 (my emphasis in bold)