Extradition Concessions Made For The Public: CE

Chief Executive Carrie Lam has rejected claims that the government has only listened to the business sector when watering down the highly controversial extradition law bill, saying the latest concessions are to allay the public's concerns.

On Thursday, the administration announced that the bill will be changed so that only extradition requests involving crimes that carry a prison term of at least seven years will be entertained, up from the three years originally planned. A second amendment to the bill will mean that any extradition requests would have to come from a country's highest authorities.

On top of these changes, the government said it will also consider asking other jurisdictions to promise to give surrendered people a fair trial, access to a lawyer, the right to appeal, and that they wouldn't be forced to make a confession.

"They actually deal with concerns, and ideas or suggestions, raised by a cross-spectrum of bodies, including some from lawyers who want more assurances on the human rights front. So I wouldn't accept any accusation that this was done for the business sector," Lam told reporters on Friday.

But pro-democracy figures had already dismissed the pledges on human rights – that won't be written into the law – as being nothing more than empty promises.

"These are simply promises that are made by the executive that have no backing of legislation," said Civic Party lawmaker and barrister Dennis Kwok.

The convenor of the Progressive Lawyers Group, Billy Li, also complained that there would be no guarantee that such protections would be sought for people extradited from Hong Kong.

Instead, Li said, the government should have introduced a gatekeeper role for Legco in the bill, and increased the power of the SAR's courts to review the legal system of any jurisdiction seeking the surrender of a wanted person from Hong Kong.

The two actual changes to the bill were requested by the business community and pro-Beijing lawmakers. They weren't satisfied by earlier concessions made when several types of economic crimes were stripped from the list of extraditable offences.