The purge on Hong Kong’s democracy activists has intensified since last week which saw the arrests of eight more opposition figures, including former legislators “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, Eddie Chu, and Wu Chi-wai, over their participation in the July 1 protest this year – the annual demonstration was banned by the police for the first time in 17 years and over 370 participants had already been arrested prior to last week’s high-profile apprehension. Separately, another eight activists were arrested the following day over a protest at the Chinese University last month. Among them, three were detained on suspicion of inciting secession, a charge which can carry a maximum sentence of life in prison.

These arrests were made ostensibly as a direct response on the part of the authorities to Ted Hui’s self-imposed exile last week; it was later revealed that Hui’s bolt for freedom had been a close shave – his successful escape was the result of a carefully-planned, devious stratagem in collaboration with two Danish members of parliament, who masterminded a fictitious trip for Hui to visit Denmark to participate in a climate conference. The smokescreen helped Hui to retrieve from the law court his travel documents which were initially seized ahead of his pending trial over nine criminal charges.

Hui’s narrow escape, along with the high-profile round-up of pro-democracy activists last week, prove yet again that Beijing is determined to sacrifice everything that is deemed to be impedimental to the assertion of its comprehensive, dictatorial control over Hong Kong. The first step of its master plan was the conversion of the Hong Kong police force into a paramilitary organization that is above the law and under its direct control. This has been achieved since the start of the anti-extradition protests more than a year ago; throughout the protests in the past year and a half one should be able to see that the police force was essentially turned into an agency of security, surveillance, and terror, a handy tool which the party has utilized to wreak vengeance upon those who show only a hint of disobedience.

The second step would be the transmutation – and ultimately the reconstruction – of Hong Kong’s independent judiciary and its common law tradition into a mere legal apparatus of the regime that is under the sole command of the Chinese Communist Party. This is already half done: with the imposition of the national security law in July, Beijing has, to all intents and purposes, set up a parallel judiciary in Hong Kong and usurped the power of adjudication completely from the local judicial authorities. At the same time, the “transmutation” process continues with the subjugation of judges to a carrot-and-stick “modus operandi”: acquiescent magistrates and judges would be favorably considered for promotion within the judiciary or aggrandizement in other unspecified ways, whilst those who are not prepared to adapt to the new reality would be demoted or even given the old heave-ho. This has so far proven to be very effective, as we have seen in Judge Kwok Wai-kin, who sentenced a pro-Beijing, anti-protest man to mere 45 months in prison – a reduction from the starting point of six years behind bar – for critically injuring three people with a knife in front of a pro-democracy message board in Tseung Kwan O last August. The pro-Beijing attacker was described by the judge during the trial as having “noble moral sentiment”. The judiciary’s favoritism towards Beijing’s supporters and bias against pro-democracy activists can be further attested by the incarceration of Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow and Ivan Lam, who were sentenced to months in prison for merely asserting their civil right to protest, a right enshrined in the Hong Kong Bill of Rights Ordinance before the handover, until the relevant provisions were scrapped in 1997 by the Beijing-appointed Provisional Legislative Council; Jimmy Lai, the founder of this newspaper and one of Beijing’s staunchest critics, and Tam Tak-chi, a prominent pro-democracy activist and commentator, have been unjustly remanded in custody for charges that were hitherto unheard of, denied bail, and placed under solitary confinement for months even before they have the chance to stand trial – the latter will have been in custody for nine months by the time he attends his first hearing.

The grim reality is that an independent judiciary has already ceased to exist in Hong Kong. Dominic Raab, the British foreign secretary, has acknowledged this and said that it may no longer be sustainable for British judges to serve in Hong Kong. James Spigelman, a retired Australian judge, resigned as a non-permanent judge in September citing concerns over the Beijing-imposed national security law. There is every evidence that it would be much ado about nothing for visiting justices from other common law jurisdictions to continue to serve in Hong Kong’s court of final appeal, save for giving the Beijing-controlled, soon-to-be kangaroo court a fig leaf of credibility. The international community, especially countries that have judges sitting on Hong Kong’s apex court, should seriously mull over the tenability of continuing with the existing practice, for this is not only a matter of lending credibility to Hong Kong’s crippled judiciary, but can be also seen as an endorsement of Beijing’s blatant attempt to ride roughshod over the rule of law in Hong Kong.

(Joseph Long is a London-based writer and linguist from Hong Kong. He is a Philosophy graduate of King’s College London and a member of the Society of Authors in the United Kingdom.)

We invite you to join the conversation by submitting columns to our opinion section: [email protected]

Apple Daily reserves the right to refuse, abridge, alter or edit guest opinion columns for accuracy, length, clarity, and style, and the right to withdraw and withhold columns based on the discretion of our editorial page editors.

The opinions of the writers do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editorial board.

---------------------------------

Apple Daily’s all-new English Edition is now available on the mobile app: bit.ly/2yMMfQE

To download the latest version,

iOS: bit.ly/AD_iOS

Android: bit.ly/AD_android

Or search Appledaily in App Store or Google Play