Early within the morning, the guards come for Jimmy Lai, a 76-year-old writer who has been in solitary confinement for the final three years. He’s fed a jail breakfast, handcuffed, and brought in a van to courtroom, the place three judges and a prosecutor, who between them signify the flower of the English authorized custom, are conducting a present trial.
Hong Kong has seen its share of tragedy and farce for the reason that British left in 1997, however the prosecution of this case is a brand new low in its descent into darkness beneath Chinese language management and the perversion of the rule of legislation by individuals who have been educated to uphold it.
Lai has dedicated no crime that might be recognised as such by any civilised authorities. He has by no means advocated violence, all the time acted peacefully, and is responsible solely of optimism in considering that phrases may at some point defeat a police state. But he’ll most likely be given a life sentence.
The formal costs in opposition to him embody “sedition” and conspiracy to interact in “collusion with international forces”, the most recent in a litany of flimsy or trumped-up examples of “lawfare” which have saved him behind bars for greater than a thousand days.
His actual offence, within the eyes of the Chinese language regime, is to have printed free speech by way of his top-selling tabloid newspaper, Apple Every day, and its digital editions, now shut down beneath the Nationwide Safety Regulation imposed by Beijing on the previous British colony in 2020.
Police cease activist Alexandra Wong, centre, often known as Grandma Wong, as she carries a union jack exterior courtroom
(AFP through Getty)
As a boy, Lai fled Mao’s China, made a fortune within the garment commerce, then launched his media enterprise and turned it into the loudest voice in assist of democracy in Hong Kong. He might have escaped as soon as once more. As a substitute, he selected to remain by way of town’s final mass motion in 2019, when he walked within the ranks of peaceable marches and studiously prevented the violent fringe of the protests. He didn’t resist when a particular police unit got here to arrest him.
Lai is a practising Roman Catholic and a British citizen. His religion has been strengthened in captivity and by the fearless Cardinal Joseph Zen, 91, who obtained him into the Church and dared to return to courtroom in a present of assist.
Late within the day, Britain’s international secretary, David Cameron, issued a press release condemning the trial and calling for Lai’s launch. He should have identified it could haven’t any impact however to impress the Chinese language media into straight-faced denunciations of “blatant intervention” designed to undermine the rule of legislation. Nonetheless, it needed to be performed.
In follow, the British authorities has no energy right here. It has to strike a stability in coping with a regime that practises hostage diplomacy and has 1000’s of British residents and companies in China at its mercy. However the worldwide authorized occupation can do way more to train the facility of disgrace and ostracism, whereas the enterprise neighborhood ought to realise what this trial means for them.
Allow us to look at the three judges who sit on the bench, every in accordance with their official biography.
David Cameron has condemned the trial of Jimmy Lai
(AFP through Getty)
Choose Esther Toh studied legislation in the UK. She was known as to the English Bar and the Hong Kong Bar in 1974 and 1975 respectively. Choose Susana Maria D’Almada Remedios obtained her LLB from the College of London and was known as to the Bar in England (Internal Temple) in 1986. She additionally practised in Australia.
The third decide, Alex Lee Wan-tang, certified in legislation on the College of Hong Kong and was appointed by the British colonial authorities as crown counsel in 1993, rising to change into senior assistant director of public prosecutions earlier than taking on his publish as a decide in 2013.
Throughout the courtroom is the person prosecuting Jimmy Lai, the zealous appearing deputy director of public prosecutions, Anthony Chau Tin-hang. He got here up by way of the ranks of a service drilled within the spirit of English justice. He now argues that sentences in nationwide safety circumstances should have a deterrent impact.
In different phrases, everybody conducting this efficiency is aware of precisely what they’re doing. They have been all schooled within the majestic ideas of widespread legislation, educated in a system that prided itself on impartiality, and knew that the Hong Kong courts have been seen as a mannequin for industrial arbitration and felony circumstances throughout Asia. They actually haven’t any excuses.
The identical may be stated for the eminent international jurists, a number of of them British, who nonetheless sit as non-permanent judges on the Hong Kong Courtroom of Last Attraction. Town’s chief, John Lee, a former police officer appointed by China, has known as their presence a worthwhile supply of legitimacy for the authorized system. Allow us to not dwell on the matter of remuneration for part-time work in Hong Kong, the place a everlasting decide on the courtroom earns greater than £30,000 in a month.
Final 12 months, the British judges, who not sit of their dwelling courts, issued a press release within the wake of the resignation of two of their colleagues, saying that it was “greater than ever essential” to assist the Hong Kong appeals courts “of their process of sustaining the rule of legislation and reviewing the acts of the chief”.
It’s laborious to see how this honourable, completely unrealistic view can survive a sequence of trials that belong to the debased custom of Stalin’s prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky and his heirs within the communist judiciaries. The British judges ought to resign.
The final phrase will belong to Jimmy Lai, even when he’s silenced for now. In 2007, the BBC invited him to a broadcast from Hong Kong to rejoice the 75th anniversary of the World Service. Going off-script, he grabbed the microphone and spoke on to his compatriots in mainland China, telling them how essential it’s to uphold free speech. A member of the BBC workforce recollects it as an “electrifying second”. The celebrity of a person like that may outlive any of those that sit in judgement on him right this moment.
Michael Sheridan was a founding international correspondent and later diplomatic editor at The Impartial. He’s writer of ‘The Gate to China: A New Historical past of Hong Kong and the Folks’s Republic’ (2021) and is engaged on a biography of Xi Jinping – ‘The Crimson Emperor’ – to be printed by Headline Books in 2024