Hong Kong extradition bill will not have safeguards and fair trial guarantee built in
- Officials say top-up protections depending on each case will allow government greater flexibility
- They are unable to clarify how they will tackle the politically tricky issue of which Taiwan authority they should deal with on extradition requests
The guarantee of a fair trial or any other safeguards will not be written into the controversial Hong Kong extradition bill, top government officials told lawmakers on Friday, while sidestepping questions as to how a politically tricky issue regarding Taiwan would be tackled.
Rather than adding protective clauses when changing the city’s fugitive transfer laws, as critics are demanding, Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s administration is proposing “top-up protections” depending on each case.
Officials said the approach was designed to give the government greater flexibility under the bill, which would allow the transfer of criminal suspects on a case-by-case basis to jurisdictions the city does not have an extradition deal with, including mainland China, Macau and Taiwan.
But officials could not clarify which authority making an extradition request would be deemed acceptable to Hong Kong when dealing with Taiwan.