Hong Kong’s professional body for barristers has ramped up criticism of the government’s controversial plan to allow the transfer of fugitives to mainland China, Taiwan and Macau, dismissing a list of exemptions offered by officials to ease the business community’s concerns as “a step backward”. In addition to the Hong Kong Bar Association’s strongly worded response on Tuesday, extradition law expert Michael Blanchflower warned that the proposal lacked sufficient protection for people facing a different legal system outside the city, even as Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor insisted on presenting the relevant bill to the legislature on Wednesday as scheduled, regardless of any legal challenge. The bill would allow the transfer of fugitives on a case-by-case basis to jurisdictions the city has no agreement with. Lam’s administration watered down the bill last week amid pressure from the business community; it wiped nine economic crimes relating to tax, securities and futures and the unlawful use of a computer from the list of extraditable offences. But the Bar Association remained unconvinced, saying the concessions had no principled basis and had failed to get to the root of the problem – the unease stemmed from fundamental differences between the judicial and criminal justice systems of the city and the mainland. “If the exclusions are motivated by concerns over the proposed changes to the extradition regime enabling rendition of persons to the rest of the PRC, these concerns should apply to all offences and not just some,” the statement, released on Tuesday, read. “That is only logical.” The body warned that these exemptions from the fugitives bill would make it impossible for any jurisdiction that did not have a long-term arrangement with the city to make a rendition request of those accused of having committed these exempted offences, which was possible under the existing arrangement. “The fugitives bill is a step backwards from the perspective of international cooperation in criminal justice,” it said. The fugitives bill is a step backwards from the perspective of international cooperation in criminal justice Hong Kong Bar Association Both the Bar Association and Blanchflower – a Senior Counsel – demanded a justification from the government for its attempt to introduce a subclause in the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, which would effectively remove the judicial authentication requirement over the supporting documents of the requesting jurisdiction. Blanchflower, former senior assistant director of public prosecutions, described it as “a fundamental change to long-established extradition law” which would weaken protections for anyone subject to rendition requests. Extradite fugitives to Taiwan, not mainland, Hong Kong opposition lawmakers urge government “Since special surrender arrangements could be made with places … where corruption of police, prosecutors and judges may be prevalent, the authentication requirements for such arrangements should be more restrictive and more onerous,” he told the Post in a written reply. The Bar Association argued the fugitives bill should empower the city’s courts to decline a rendition if they are unsatisfied of minimum rights in the place of trial. The administration had insisted on the changes to plug a legal loophole exposed by a recent homicide case, in which a Hongkonger wanted for allegedly murdering his girlfriend in Taiwan could not be sent to the self-ruled island to face trial because of the lack of an extradition deal. But the barristers’ body accused the city officials of “misleading” the public, saying it was a deliberate decision by the legislature to not cover mainland China as it enacted the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance in 1997. Security chief John Lee Ka-chiu on Wednesday dismissed the accusation, saying the existing ordinance had excluded China because, at the time, the government had planned to negotiate a long-term agreement with it. On Monday, fugitive tycoon Joseph Lau Luen-hung lodged a judicial review against the proposal, arguing it was unconstitutional and should not have any retroactive effect. The first hearing of his legal bid has been scheduled for April 17. But the security minister said on Tuesday that the amended law must carry a retroactive effect as it has been drafted in response to an existing case of a fugitive not being extradited. Extradition agreement would damage Hong Kong’s ‘safe reputation’ for business, AmCham says “A fugitive means a person who escaped [punishment for] a crime he had committed in the past. We must therefore pursue his earlier offences,” Lee said. “As a matter of fact, if we want to deal with the Taiwan murder case, we are actually dealing with a crime that had been committed previously.” Former Bar Association chairman Ronny Tong Ka-wah, one of Lam’s advisors on the Executive Council, defended the extradition plan and called the concerns misplaced. “If one can only extradite a criminal to a country which has a superior record of rule of law, then many countries would not be able to employ any extradition process at all. That frankly makes no sense,” he said. Additional reporting by Christy Leung