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Tibet and Xinjiang independence should be handled by Beijing under new national security law, says top adviser

蘋果日報 2020/06/22 07:00


Cases related to the Tibet and Xinjiang independence movements should be handled by the central government once Hong Kong’s national security law comes into force, said Beijing senior adviser Elsie Leung.
Leung, former deputy director of the Hong Kong Basic Law Committee, said in an interview with Commercial Radio Hong Kong that she has yet to read the draft of the new law but added that it was not surprising to hear that a small number of national security cases would be handled by Beijing.
She said, prior to the end of British rule in Hong Kong in 1997, if a colonial governor violated the law, he or she would be sent to London for trial. Leung also cited cases related to the Catalonia independence movement as examples, saying that trials were heard in Madrid instead of within Catalonia. Similarly, if there are cases related to the Tibet and Xinjiang independence movements after the national security law is enacted in Hong Kong, Leung said they should be heard in Beijing because Hong Kong may be unfamiliar with such matters.
Leung also pushed back on claims that the new commission of safeguarding national security set up under the law would threaten the autonomy of Hong Kong. She said that the commission’s Beijing-appointed adviser would only provide opinions and would not have any legal enforcement power. She denied that the adviser would exert control over the Hong Kong government as the adviser could not directly order the commission on how to enforce the law.
During the interview, Leung also defended the law for granting the Hong Kong chief executive authority to select judges for national security cases. She said the chief executive would have “special information and abilities” to determine how to safeguard national security.
Asked if the national security law would override the Basic Law and the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Leung said that the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong people were not absolute, adding that national security trumped human rights. She also said the central government had the ultimate right to interpret the law.
In response to Leung’s comments, Democratic Party chair and lawmaker Wu Chi-wai said Hong Kongers had no trust in the mainland’s legal system, seeing as to how Beijing suppresses and punishes dissidents. He said he believed the text of the national security law would have a lot of ambiguities and gray areas, which the Commuist Party could exploit and interpret to best suit their needs.
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