By Jerome A. Cohen
Now that the arrests of the Hong Kong 12 have been approved, after 37 days of incommunicado detention, there is not likely to be much news about the case emanating from the PRC for a few months, unless international pressure stimulates Beijing to a quicker than usual response. But the pot continues to boil on the HK side.
Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal has a good article entitled “China Snatched the ‘Hong Kong 12’ Off a Speedboat, Giving Protest Movement New Life.” It reports that families of the detainees continue to call for their return to HK (instead of being prosecuted in the mainland), a fruitless demand at this point. More interestingly, it notes that the families claim that it took five days before they learned that the suspects were being held in Shenzhen and quotes the father of one of the suspects to the effect that the families have still been told nothing about their case, apparently either by the HKG or PRC officials.
It has previously been reported that the PRC has not allowed PRC lawyers retained by the families to enter the case and indeed has used the usual methods to prevent their participation. More recent, however, is the father’s claim that the PRC lawyers reportedly imposed on the suspects “have never contacted us. They wouldn’t even tell us the lawyers’ names.”
It is quite possible that no lawyers have yet been assigned to the case, since the interrogations of the suspects and investigation are apparently not yet complete. Usually in the PRC, as a matter of practice, defense lawyers are not permitted to enter the case at least until the police have obtained confessions and believe the basis for indictment is well-prepared. At that point, there is little that lawyers can do to advise the suspects except to prepare them for what is to come, and the possibilities for lawyers to conduct their own investigation from witnesses and obtain other relevant defense information are highly restricted. Even then, lawyers are often not permitted to try to act until after indictment, and only cursorily, before being permitted to appear in the eventual trial, largely as window dressing.
In the meantime, HK attention is growing with respect to reports that the HK police may have played a secret but active role in alerting PRC police colleagues to the suspects’ plan for escape from HK to Taiwan. It will be important to see how the story unfolds.