Hong Kong has passed a law that allows authorities to ban foreign lawyers from working on national security cases, completing a months-long effort to block a UK practitioner from defending the media mogul and activist Jimmy Lai.
The amendment, which was passed unanimously by the Legislative Council on Thursday, gives the chief executive the power to veto any foreign lawyer from working on cases brought under the 2020 National Security Law (NSL).
Lai, the founder of now defunct Apple Daily newspaper and a high profile pro-democracy figure, was first arrested in August 2020. He has since been charged with foreign collusion under the sweeping NSL, after calling for sanctions against Hong Kong and China over their crackdown on the pro-democracy movement. If convicted he could face life in prison. Apple Daily shut down after its assets were frozen by the police in 2021.
Lai had sought to engage UK lawyer Tim Owen in defending the charges. The government challenged Owen’s appointment in court, but lost an appeal in November when the city’s highest court ruled Owen could represent Lai. The chief executive, John Lee, then asked Beijing to intervene, and make an “interpretation” of the national security law to clarify its stance on foreign lawyers.
In the interim, Lai’s trial was postponed from November, when the immigration department withheld Owen’s application for a visa extension to stay in Hong Kong, and again in December when that application was denied and Owen was forced to leave.
Soon afterwards, Beijing declared that courts needed approval from the chief executive to allow foreign lawyers on national security cases. Wednesday’s amendment enshrines that interpretation in Hong Kong law, and adds to mounting concern over the independence of Hong Kong’s once vaunted judiciary. Previous changes have given the chief executive the power to appoint judges to oversee national security trials, which are not guaranteed to be heard in front of a jury.
Lai’s trial is set to begin in late September, by which time he will have spent almost 1,000 days in jail. He was initially held on remand, but is now serving successive terms for convictions related to the 2019 protests and business fraud, all charges his supporters say are politically motivated.
In Washington, the US government’s congressional-executive commission on China held a hearing on Thursday, examining the erosion of the rule of law in Hong Kong. At the hearing, exiled Hong Kong activists drew attention to the mass political imprisonment in the city since the national security law passed three years ago.
“Mass political imprisonment affects virtually ever sector of Hong Kong society, every community, every neighbourhood,” said Brian Kern, an activist formerly based in Hong Kong. “Almost everyone in Hong Kong knows someone imprisoned for political reasons.”
Since the start of the mass anti-government protests in June 2019, there have been 10,615 political arrests in Hong Kong, said Kern, researcher of the US-based Hong Kong Democracy Council’s report on political prisoners. He noted that there were 1,014 political prisoners in the city as of May last year, but that figure has jumped by nearly 50% to 1,457 within a year.
“The only countries incarcerating political prisoners at rates faster than Hong Kong’s over the past three years are Myanmar and Belarus,” he said.
“How high does the number has to get for the world to actively hold the Chinese Communist party accountable?” asked Anna Kwok, executive director of Hong Kong Democracy Council.
Lai’s son, Sebastian, pointed out that his 75-year-old father may never get out of jail as he is likely to receive a lengthy sentence. “My father is in prison because he spoke truth to power for decades,” he said. “He is still … refusing to be silenced, even though he has lost everything and he may die in prison.”
On Wednesday, he accused the UK government of “weakness” for not speaking out about his father with the same strength as the US. Both father and son are British citizens.
“It’s very sad to see a democratic government being afraid – or asking permission, even – to speak on behalf of one of its citizens that is in prison for freedom of speech,” said the younger Lai. “It’s just ridiculous.”
