On September 3, Jimmy Lai, founder of the Apple Daily newspaper, was acquitted by the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts of criminal intimidation charges over an incident in 2017 at a Tiananmen massacre vigil. The news brought little happiness to the Hong Kong people, for the overall political situation in Hong Kong has already been continuously worsening, and this acquittal indeed should have been determined by any reasonable judge at reasonable times. Jimmy’s saying “I will go after you, and I have taken photo evidence of you” against the controversial reporter of another newspaper three years ago in the Victoria Park was outrageously labeled by the Secretary for Justice Teresa Cheng as criminal intimidation, notwithstanding consistently contrary opinion held by her colleagues within the Secretary for Justice and external senior counsels who advised dropping such absurd charges. This was certainly an abuse of prosecution powers which are nowadays substantially controlled by the CCP-led puppet regime.

This is certainly not yet the end of the story. This judgment is still subject to possible appeal by the Secretary for Justice, so Jimmy must now speak cautiously. Besides, Jimmy Lai has been separately charged with, among others, collusion with foreign powers to endanger national security under the notorious national security law. His passport has already been taken away by the Hong Kong authorities. He became known as one of the prime Hong Kong democracy activist-figures targeted by the CCP regime, in an attempt to create a grave deterrent effect against all dissidents in Hong Kong. Reportedly there will also be a real risk that he might be sent to mainland China for detention, trial and punishment, particularly if US-China tensions accelerate and if China adopts its usual hostage diplomacy. These being said, Jimmy’s courage and faith remain strong. We sincerely pray for him. As long as Apple Daily is not yet forced to shut down, many commentators and I will try our best to keep submitting articles to support it.

The acquittal judgment of the court is an independent, though isolated, spark of veracity and justice made by Magistrate Chung Ming-sun, May. She truthfully clarified that there are two criteria constituting criminal intimidation offense to be proven by the prosecution: intimidation to inflict bodily harm against the victim; intention to terrify the victim. She concluded that neither was proven. Given that Jimmy had been continuously provoked by this reporter for many years, it was a burst of condemnation on the spot stemmed from overwhelming anger, rather than deliberate criminal intimidation. After all, this is more or less common sense, which has become a rarity for judges within Hong Kong’s judiciary to courageously speak the truth and make such an honest judgment. As I mentioned previously, Hong Kong is dead and the judiciary no longer holds the fort, particularly after the passing of the totalitarian national security law. However, Hong Kong people are not dead and Hong Kong judges can still exercise their powers to demonstrate their faith in freedom and human rights, although some will and others will not.

At almost the same time, Chief Executive Carrie Lam openly proclaimed that there is no separation of powers, i.e. executive, legislature and judiciary, under the Basic Law of Hong Kong, and any false statements previously made by government officials should have been considered void and inaccurate, notwithstanding clear provision under the Basic Law always saying that Hong Kong has “independent” judiciary and right to “final” appeal. After all, the law means nothing in the eyes of the CCP regime. Carrie further called upon all Hong Kong publishers of liberal studies textbooks to examine and edit the “Today Hong Kong” section, so as to remove any mention of separation of powers as Hong Kong political system features. This once again indicates that One Country Two Systems has been certified dead. Separation of powers essentially means checks and balances. According to Carrie’s saying, she, as Chief Executive, is the supreme leader or fuehrer of the entire Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, and is ntrusted by the CCP regime to oversee the executive, legislature and judiciary of Hong Kong in their entirety. This is actually a mere reiteration of what Xi Jinping notoriously said in Hong Kong back in 2009, when he called for cooperation, rather than checks and balances, among the three powers of Hong Kong. This is shameless and sad.

On the whole, let’s not get lost in the jungle of philosophical debates on the separation of powers: whether there is any pure form of separation of powers; whether there are oriental or western styles; what are the precise structure, wordings and sections of the Basic Law, etc. Actually, the most crucial issue is: what would the CCP regime and its HKSAR puppet regime do next after Carrie’s aforementioned proclamation.

I would say deforming and transforming the Hong Kong judiciary would be one of the most urgent goals of the CCP regime, to gradually convert it to a party-led ruling apparatus similar to what has happened in mainland China. Such a scheme can be at least twofold. One might be to cleanse and change out those judges who have foreign nationalities and who are not seen as politically loyal to the CCP regime and Xi Jinping, and also reshape the mechanism of nomination and appointment of judges, and require all judges to complete on-the-job nationalism and patriotism training. Another might be to further reduce judicial review powers of all judges. Article 14(3) of the new national security law for Hong Kong, saying that all decisions of the national security commission of the HKSAR shall not be subject to judicial review, is just the beginning.

I would anticipate that more carve-outs as such will be made until a time when Hong Kong courts and judges would have virtually no or very minimal judicial review powers, and the executive would face virtually no or very limited checks and balances from the judiciary. If this is the case, and if what Carrie said this week is put into real action, then the judgment made by Magistrate May Chung is likely the last spark of professionalism within the HKSAR regime.

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