By Jerome A. Cohen
Here is todays’s preposterous and frightening Xinhua story about the National Security Law. It relies, as China Daily and other PRC propaganda vehicles have, on former Hong Kong Director of Public Prosecutions, Grenville Cross, who continues to wax enthusiastic about the very broad potential reach of the forthcoming NSL, which he sees as an “antidote” and a “minimalist” approach.
While justifying the law in terms of the need to put down violence and terrorism, Cross nevertheless suggests interpreting the criminalization of collusion with foreign or external forces to include “asking external forces to harm the interests of Hong Kong officials or agencies, or to otherwise hurt the interests of Hong Kong.” So, if Martin Lee, Jimmy Lai, Dennis Kwok and others, even including Anson Chan, again criticize Carrie Lam or her subordinates while in New York or Washington DC, they can soon be sent to prison for up to 10 years. Moreover, they will not even have to criticize any HK officials or agencies. It will be enough for them to say anything that the successors to Mr. Cross may claim has “hurt the interests of HK,” even if many in and out of Hong Kong believe that what the defendants have said actually supports the true interests of Hong Kong.
How can Cross keep a straight face as he repeats that the NSL’s arrangement for the Chief Executive to appoint the judges who will try the accusations made by his government does not affect the SAR’s judicial independence? Certainly the HK Bar Association dismisses this as nonsense, as does Andrew Li, the able first Chief Justice of HK, now retired, who is quoted, NOT in Xinhua or China Daily but in the June 22 SCMP, as saying that giving the chief executive the power to select the judges would be “detrimental to the independence of the judiciary.”