National security law: no Hong Kong judges should resign, Justice Kemal Bokhary says, amid pressure on foreign jurists to quit

Bokhary, a local non-permanent judge at Hong Kong’s top court, says he will not leave and will continue serving as best as he can
Pressure has mounted on foreign judges of Hong Kong courts, particularly after Beijing passed changes to the city’s electoral system

Hong Kong courts

Zoe Low

Published: 10:49pm, 21 Mar 2021

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Corrected [10:34pm, 22 Mar, 2021]

[10:34pm, 22 Mar, 2021]
This article has been updated to correct Justice Kemal Bokhary's title. He is a non-permanent judge of the Court of Final Appeal, not a non-permanent judge of the Supreme Court.

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Veteran judge Kemal Bokhary, who sits in Hong Kong’s top court, has weighed in on the debate on whether foreign jurists should leave the city’s judicial system over national security law concerns by saying he has no plans to quit.

“You may have guessed that I do not think anybody else should do so either,” Bokhary, 73, told local media after receiving his Covid-19 vaccine at the Ap Lei Chau community vaccination centre on Sunday.

He added that he thought judges should not become involved in political controversies and that he still had confidence in the city’s judiciary, even though there were people who had lost faith in the courts.

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Bokhary, a local non-permanent judge at the Court of Final Appeal, said he would continue his work in court as best as he could instead of going about commenting on the issue. “If even doing so cannot regain their confidence in the judiciary, simply telling them to trust the courts would surely be useless,” Bokhary said. “I’ll just get on with my job,” he added.

Court of Final Appeal non-permanent judge Justice Kemal Bokhary at a sharing session on Human Rights at the University of Hong Kong in 2016. Photo: Felix Wong

Pressure has mounted on foreign judges serving Hong Kong’s courts, particularly after Beijing passed changes to the city’s electoral system earlier this month.

On Wednesday, fellow non-permanent judge Robert Reed, who is also president of Britain’s Supreme Court, told the British parliament he would consider quitting the Court of Final Appeal “if there’s any undermining of the independence of the Hong Kong judiciary or if it’s expected to act contrary to rule of law, or it’s simply the situation in Hong Kong became one where we could no longer in good conscience serve there”.

However, Bokhary said judges in every region would reach a “critical point” where they felt they could no longer serve in their capacity, but felt confident that Hong Kong had not reached that stage.

Bokhary’s comments also come on the heels of British jurist Lord Jonathan Sumption saying in a letter to The Times that calling for foreign judges to step down was unrelated to judicial independence or rule of law, but rather an attempt to press British judges into taking part in a “political boycott designed to put pressure on the Chinese government to change its position on democracy”.

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Sumption made clear he intended to continue serving in the Court of Final Appeal and would not bow to demands by British lawmakers for Western judges to resign.

Justice James Spigelman, from Australia, stepped down from the court in September, citing concerns over the security law, which targets acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces. In January, British Queen’s Counsel David Perry quit as lead prosecutor in the trial of media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying and eight others over their alleged roles in an anti-government rally in 2019.

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