Читать книгу Rebel City - South China Morning Post Team - Страница 28

Others were more skeptical – both of Lam’s motivations and Beijing’s record on the rule of law.

Concerns over Hong Kong’s status as a separate jurisdiction had lingered since 2015, when five men linked to Causeway Bay Books – which sold salacious publications on the private lives of China’s top leadership – went missing in various places, only to emerge in mainland custody. The saga climaxed when the shop’s owner was taken from Hong Kong to the mainland, without any official record of his departure, sparking fears that he had been abducted by government agents.

Then, in 2017, billionaire Xiao Jianhua mysteriously vanished from a luxury hotel in the city, with many, including local government sources, believing he had been spirited across the border by mainland agents.

So when the extradition bill was introduced in February 2019, many saw it as an attempt to fully remove the firewall between Hong Kong and the mainland. Pan-democratic lawmakers warned that Beijing could use the law to pursue political dissidents, white-collar criminal suspects and even visitors passing through the city, perhaps by trumping up charges so that its extradition requests were granted.

They said that once Hong Kong surrendered a fugitive to the mainland – or indeed any other jurisdiction with a dubious human rights record – it would no longer be able to ensure that individuals received a fair trial or adequate legal representation.

At the core of these objections lay a deep mistrust of the legal process on the mainland, where many cases take years to come to trial and even then the conviction rate is unnervingly high – reportedly 99.9 per cent in 2014.

“Are we really confident of handing over an accused person to be tried on the mainland?” asked legal sector lawmaker Dennis Kwok. “The law there stipulates that cases have to be heard within six months, but many defendants have been held incommunicado for three, five or even seven years.”