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Chief Executive Carrie Lam has told key aides her governance and credibility are on the line but can she walk away from the worst political crisis since she took office two years ago? Illustration: Henry Wong

Hong Kong extradition bill: how murder of a pregnant woman, the US-China trade war and a determined leader have cranked up the heat in city’s political arena

  • Chief Executive Carrie Lam has told key aides her governance and credibility are on the line, but can she walk away from the worst political crisis since she took office?
  • Sparks have flown as lawmakers try to wrest control of a committee to scrutinise a bill that would allow the transfer of fugitives to jurisdictions including mainland China

Hong Kong’s legislature has been a simmering cauldron of tension over the past few years, but on Saturday emotions boiled over as lawmakers pushed and shoved each other while fighting for control of a committee.

A veteran pan-democrat’s tearful face, as he pleaded a rival “not to be remembered as a sinner” for selling Hong Kong out, became the most evocative image of the clashes.

The scene was repeatedly shown on local and international TV as onlookers shook their heads at the degradation of democracy in the city.

Just how was Hong Kong being sold out? According to the pan-democrats, the big sell-out is the bill to allow the transfer of fugitives to jurisdictions the city currently has no extradition deals with, including mainland China.

Over the past week, legislators tried to wrest control of a committee scrutinising the bill which critics fear would lead to Hong Kong residents being victimised under a different legal system in mainland China.

The legislation has been opposed by the pan-democrats, legal experts and businesspeople and sparked the biggest protests in the city since the Occupy movement in 2014.

US Secretary of State concerned extradition bill ‘threatens rule of law’

It has brought the Legislative Council into uncharted waters, with the continuing failure to call for a bills committee and the repeated clashes.

The troubled passage of the bill is also playing out against the backdrop of an intensifying trade war between China and the United States.

Analysts say Carrie Lam has overplayed her hand in tabling the extradition bill. Photo: Sam Tsang

The American Chamber of Commerce and Washington’s top envoy in Hong Kong were among the first in the city’s international community to speak up against the bill.

Objections from overseas and at home have since mounted, evoking memories of the summer of 2003, when an attempt to legislate a national security law prompted similar antipathy that eventually drove half a million people onto the city’s streets.

The current bitter divide, however, seems to be completely incongruent with the pledge of Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor, who, on her first day in office, vowed to heal the widening social divisions left behind by her unpopular predecessor, Leung Chun-ying.

Initially, the government did water down the bill in response to the business sector. But the community declared it was still dissatisfied. The controversy snowballed.

Lam, as Post sources revealed this week, upped the ante by telling her key staffers her governance and credibility would be on the line if the bill was not passed.

Sources have said the bill was her idea and not a directive from the central government.

But Beijing in the past few days has spoken up in support and is lobbying the government’s allies, to shore up Lam.

Given Beijing’s involvement, can Lam still walk away from the bill and from what is possibly the worst political crisis – of her own making by all reckoning – since taking office nearly two years ago?

Pro-democracy lawmaker Wu Chi-wai scuffles with security guards at the Legislative Council on May 11, 2019. Photo: AP

The government said the change aimed to plug two loopholes – first to secure justice over a murder case in Taiwan and second to establish a mechanism for the transfer of fugitives to jurisdictions the city had no long-term extradition treaties with.

In the homicide case, Taiwanese authorities were unable to extradite Hongkonger Chan Tong-kai accused of killing his girlfriend in Taipei then fleeing home.

Lam and her security minister John Lee Ka-chiu stressed the urgency of passing the bill as Chan could be released as early as October after the 20-year old was jailed for 29 months on related money-laundering charges.

But this reason now appears irrelevant as Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said last week it would not agree to the transfer of Chan if the city’s extradition proposal put Taiwanese citizens at risk of being sent to mainland China.
Tens of thousands took to the streets to protest the extradition bill on April 28. Photo: Robert Ng

The government also has yet to offer a convincing argument over why officials did not try to address the specifics of the Taiwan case first before seeking long-term changes to the city’s extradition laws.

“The development has fuelled the conspiracy theory it is an order from Beijing and that the Taiwan case is merely an excuse,” said lawmaker Wu Chi-wai, the chairman of the Democratic Party.

Wu, known for being mild-mannered, became emotional as he protested against the bill in recent weeks.

Beijing flexes its muscles over controversial Hong Kong extradition bill

Days before his tearful appeal to veteran pro-establishment lawmaker Abraham Razack not to be a “sinner” in the bills committee meeting, he shouted a profanity at Lam during a question and answer session in the legislature.

He said Lam was “useless dead or alive” after the city’s leader stood by her guns, dismissing the “unnecessary fear” which she said was triggered by misunderstanding of the proposal.

“A sense of overwhelming anger arose in me as she was basically suggesting everyone is wrong except her,” Wu said.

“I have lost all my faith in Lam, who is lying through her teeth, slaying the ‘one country, two systems’ guiding principle and exposing all Hongkongers to the risk of being unfairly tried on the mainland.”

Wu is convinced the danger posed by the extradition bill is more serious than the national security law which the government was forced to shelve after a public backlash in 2003.

Article 23 of the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution, requires the city to enact its own laws to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the central government. But since the 2003 debacle, no government has dared accept the poisoned chalice.

“The ‘one country, two systems’ model stems from our lack of trust in the mainland’s judicial system. Once the firewall is gone, there would only be ‘one country, one system’ and that really touched my nerve,” Wu said.

Lawmaker Abraham Razack (bottom of picture) is surrounded by other legislators during a stormy meeting of the Fugitive Offenders bills committee meeting at the Legislative Council on May 11. Photo: Edmond So

But others, like former Bar Association chairman Ronny Tong Ka-wah – one of Lam’s advisers in the Executive Council – said the proposed changes are long overdue and are measures he has been demanding for two decades.

He stressed there were protections offered by Hong Kong’s courts to prevent people from being extradited for charges of a political nature.

But a key doubt remains: would Hong Kong, governed by the “one country, two systems” principle, be able to say no to Beijing?

Tempers flare over controversial extradition bill in Legco

Even Lam’s ally in Legco, pro-establishment lawmaker Paul Tse Wai-chun, conceded the government had underestimated the backlash.

Tse said it was reasonable for the city to work on an extradition deal with mainland China as the gap could not be left unplugged forever. But he conceded the government had overplayed the Taiwan case, which had put it in a tight spot. Along the way, it also ceded the moral high ground to critics, including the US, he said.

The US factor has loomed large and political watchers and lawmakers admit the passage of the bill was being complicated by the US-China trade war.

Lawmaker Paul Tse conceded the government had underestimated the backlash. Photo: Nora Tam

Some, like Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute at the University of London, said the extradition bill was not a major concern of Donald Trump’s administration. But others said the Hong Kong authorities were inadvertently providing more ammunition to the US in its feud with China.

Chinese University political analyst Ivan Choy Chi-keung cited the increasingly vocal Kurt Tong, the US’s top envoy in the city, as signs of Washington’s souring attitude.

Tong had warned the proposed amendment “could have some impact” on the implementation of the bilateral arrangement between the US and Hong Kong.

Such statements were in stark contrast to that of his predecessor Clifford Hart, who barely commented on local affairs even during the height of the Occupy demonstrations five years ago, Choy said.

“As the tension between the US and China flares, Washington thinks there is no need to be too tolerant of Beijing,” he said.

Kurt Tong, the United States consul general to Hong Kong and Macau has warned the proposed amendment “could have some impact” on the implementation of the bilateral arrangement between the US and Hong Kong. Photo: Winson Wong

Beijing-friendly politicians, on the other hand, railed at pan-democrats for allowing themselves to become bargaining tools of the US when they urged the White House to lend support to their cause.

On Thursday, a delegation of pan-democrats visiting Washington appeared before the US lawmakers’ committee, the US Congressional-Executive Commission on China, which monitors Beijing’s actions on human rights and its commitment to the rule of law.

Congressional report warns extradition bill could pose risk to US national security

Led by veteran democrat Martin Lee Chu-ming, they warned of the dire consequences the bill would bring not only to Hong Kong, but also to the US and other nations, many of which do not have extradition deals with mainland China but do with Hong Kong. Lee argued the US might even be “Beijing’s special target of the law”.

Labour Party stalwart Lee Cheuk-yan, who is part of the delegation which was due to meet Secretary of State Michael Pompeo last evening, brushed aside accusations of disloyalty.

“Beijing has turned a blind eye to Hongkongers’ opinion even when scores of people have come up. It only listens to power and undeniably the US is a power,” Lee said.

“We are not anyone’s pawns in this international game of chess. In fact, we are trying to get the US to be our pawns to pile pressure on Beijing.”

The controversy has affected Lam’s popularity – which hit a record low of 44.3 out of 100 in the latest survey by the University of Hong Kong – and she has lost any goodwill she had with the Democratic Party.

The party, regarded as the most moderate faction within the pro-democracy bloc, officially demanded her resignation.

The opposition, still trying to regroup after the Occupy movement, has received a strong boost to morale with its biggest rally, of tens of thousands, in five years.

Adding fuel to the opposition, 12 former and incumbent chairmen of the Hong Kong Bar Association also issued a rare statement on Wednesday, expressing “dismay” at the administration’s insistence on passing the bill.

Legal scholar and Basic Law Committee member Albert Chen has warned the bill, if passed, could place Hong Kong courts in a ‘difficult and invidious’ position. Photo: David Wong

Even Basic Law Committee member Professor Albert Chen Hung-yee, a prominent and conservative legal scholar, broke his silence by warning that the bill, if passed, could place Hong Kong courts in a “difficult and invidious” position by having to judge whether mainland China’s legal system complied with human rights standards before granting extradition requests.

But Lam has shown no sign of backing down. A pragmatist, she has calculated she has secured enough votes to pass the bill. It was understood that with the earlier concessions – exempting 15 white-collar crimes from the list of 46 extraditable offences – the Business and Professionals Alliance would now give her its eight votes.

Row over controversial extradition bill intensifies as legal scholar call for changes

Lam, according to her aides, also believes that if she were to succumb to pressure from pan-democrats, she would not be able to govern decisively for the rest of her term.

A pro-establishment source also expected Beijing to be more vocal in defending the bill.

Zhang Xiaoming, the director of the State Council’s Hong Kong and Macau Office, was the latest to join the fray on Wednesday by acknowledging Lam’s effort to allay fears over the bill.

Beijing’s top man in the city, Wang Zhimin, also met and lobbied the pro-establishment politicians for their support on Thursday, an irony Lam’s critics did not miss given she had previously declared she did not need the liaison office to do her political work.

“Beijing tends to take a stronger stance whenever opposition builds up,” the source said, citing the case of the central government’s refusal to budge over political reform despite the launch of Occupy.

Left to right: Tung Chee-hwa, chairman of Our Hong Kong Foundation, Chief Executive Carrie Lam; and Wang Zhimin, director of the central government’s liaison office in Hong Kong. Photo: Nora Tam

The room for a compromise over the bill now appeared to be unlikely with Beijing’s involvement, the source added.

Mainland Chinese officials come out in support of Hong Kong’s controversial extradition law

Chinese University’s Choy said Lam had only herself to blame for her predicament. “She miscalculated the backlash by failing to consult her allies thoroughly beforehand, as witnessed in the reactions from the business sector and legal scholars like Chen. She has also taken too strong a stance along the way,” he said, citing the officials’ attempts to shoot down all the alternatives by different parties.

Opinion: Opponents to extradition bill are blind to progress in China’s legal system

“Shelving the bill at this time would inevitably put the pro-establishment bloc, which has been defending the plan for her, in a very embarrassing position.”

Choy disagreed with Lam’s defence that her governance would be compromised should she back down, saying that effectively meant she did not care about public opinion at all.

Pro-establishment lawmaker Michael Tien Puk-sun, who has been proposing alternatives to seek a middle ground, said the government would pay a price, whether it shelved the bill or succeeded in passing it, as the opposition would only solidify and grow.

“The only solution is for the administration to make a substantial compromise to get the bill passed,” he said. “Perhaps that could still earn it some praise.”

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