'At-risk Judicial Independence Is All HK Has Left'

Legal scholar Johannes Chan said on Wednesday that Beijing appears to be growing increasingly impatient with an independent judicial system in Hong Kong that it fails to understand or appreciate, and attacks on the judiciary could destroy the only remaining difference between the two systems on either side of the border.

Chan's comments come after three senior judges told the Reuters news agency that the independence of Hong Kong's judicial system is "under assault" from the Chinese Communist Party, posing the gravest threat to the rule of law in the SAR since the handover.

"They cannot accept independent courts and also think the courts are just part of the government machinery," Chan said.

"I think that is the dangerous thing because judicial independence is the only difference between the two systems, and if you destroy judicial independence there is virtually nothing left in One Country, Two Systems".

Chan said that while there was a hands-off approach up until 2010, since then Basic Law interpretations have been made to pre-empt court judgements, and Beijing has also begun criticising judges for rulings it is unhappy with.

"Not only do they fail to see the importance of the independence of the judiciary as an institution, they also try to attack individual judges, which in a way creates a kind of fear that judges had better watch out. That is extremely worrying."

Chan said at this point, there is no reason to doubt the independence of the judiciary and people can be confident that it is strong enough to resist such pressure from Beijing.

But at the same time, he said, if the public and the world have a perception that the Hong Kong judiciary has lost its independence, then this would be a serious problem.

He also said that the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office and liaison office had "clearly interfered" in the SAR's affairs this week by pinpointing specific issues and individuals in Legco that they are unhappy with.

"Politically, I think it's a very stupid move," he told RTHK's Richard Pyne, adding that the authorities should be using this time to heal divisions now that the social unrest has died down due to the coronavirus pandemic.

He said Chief Executive Carrie Lam was just going along with Beijing's mistakes in this regard, showing her "second-rate civil service mentality" in following her boss rather than behaving like a true political leader.