Key points from Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s defence of decision to jail young activists

On Monday, Hong Kong’s leader fired back at critics of the Court of Appeal after thousands marched in support of jailed protesters Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and Alex Chow

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Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor defended Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen. Photo: Dickson Lee

Published: 9:57am, 22 Aug 2017Updated: 9:57am, 22 Aug 2017

Below are extracts from Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s remarks during a press briefing on Monday evening in which she responded to criticism against the Court of Appeal’s decision to toughen penalties for activists Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Nathan Law Kwun-chung and Alex Chow Yong-kang. The appeal court jailed the trio for six to eight months last week for their role in clashes at the government headquarters at Admiralty, in a prelude to the pro-democracy Occupy protests of 2014, of which they became key leaders. In a magistrate’s court ruling in 2016, Wong and Law were sentenced to a community service order of 80 hours and 120 hours respectively, while Chow was given a three-week jail sentence with one year suspension.

Lam: Regarding the Court of Appeal’s rulings on two sentence review cases last week, I want to make three very important points.

First is, rights and freedoms of Hong Kong people are protected under the Basic Law, but the exercise of these rights and freedoms as pointed out by the court is not without limit – they have, first of all, to be law abiding, so in these two cases, what we are dealing with is not political persecutions or persecution on the basis of expression of the views. But they are unlawful acts, or even acts involving violence.

(From front left) Nathan Law Kwun-chung, Joshua Wong Chi-fung and Alex Chow Yong-kang appear at the High Court. Photo: Edward Wong

The second point I want to make is the rule of law is absolutely essential to the successful implementation of “one country, two systems”, and the continued prosperity and stability of Hong Kong.

Indeed, under Basic Law [Article] 63, prosecution decisions are made by the Department of Justice without any interference. So any allegation that the secretary for justice himself or the Department of Justice have made decisions to review the sentences on political grounds are totally unfounded.

The third point I want to make is even more important, and that is the independence of the judiciary. Under Basic Law 85, our courts are exercising judicial powers independently, free from any interference. So any allegation that in these particular cases that judges in the Court of Appeal have made decisions under political interference again are totally unfounded. So I feel duty bound as the chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region to make it very clear that there’s absolutely no political interference both in the prosecution, in the review of sentence, and in the judgments and rulings handed down by the Court of Appeal.