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New national security law office will end Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, says legal scholar

蘋果日報 2020/06/22 08:30


A draft of the looming national security law that Beijing has tailor-made for Hong Kong has prompted experts to worry about the end of the city’s high degree of autonomy.
According to details published by the state-run Xinhua News Agency on Saturday, Beijing will set up a new office of safeguarding national security in Hong Kong. The report said that the office “may exercise jurisdiction over a tiny number of criminal cases” but did not elaborate on what these cases would be.
Johannes Chan, a law professor at the University of Hong Kong, told i-Cable News that the arrangement was a serious violation of the Basic Law and made the protections enshrined in the mini-constitution meaningless.
Chan said that it was difficult to know if the office would be in charge of conducting investigations, arrests, the ceasing of property, trials as well as handing down judgments. He said that, given the lack of clarity, the office could decide if a case fell under its jurisdiction and the arrested party would in effect no longer be tried under Hong Kong’s legal system but China’s. “It is uncertain what rights the person would have,” Chan said of such cases.
The office is required to supervise, guide, coordinate with and support the Hong Kong government in performing its duties on safeguarding national security, according to Xinhua’s report. Chan worried that the term “supervise” meant that the Hong Kong government had to listen to orders from Beijing.
“It means that there will be a new agency on top of the chief executive,” said Chan. “How can there still be a high degree of autonomy in Hong Kong?”
The new law also gives the chief executive authority to select judges for cases involving national security. Chan said this meant China could select judges, which would be a serious threat to the public’s confidence in judicial independence.
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