Give Us Another Chance With The Bill: Carrie Lam

Chief Executive Carrie Lam was adamant on Saturday that she will not abandon plans to change the city's extradition laws, despite suspending a legislative bill on the amendments following massive street protests and fierce opposition both at home and abroad.

Lam said she still believes the amendments to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance are "fully justified" and there is a need to plug a "loophole" in the SAR's laws.

"In doing the legislative exercise, myself and my colleagues were driven by our passion for Hong Kong. We want Hong Kong to do well. If Hong Kong's justice system and mutual legal assistance regime have some major deficiencies, it is our responsibility to rectify those deficiencies," Lam said.

"Yes, we have not done a good enough job to convince people and to ensure that these laudable objectives can be met. But give us another chance. We will not only do this bill well ... in our engagement of people we can get more diverse opinions, we can build a broader consensus to do it."

Lam told a media briefing that the international community has also been putting pressure on the SAR to improve legislation regarding extraditions to the mainland.

She said the G7's Financial Action Task Force (FATF), for example, has said that although Hong Kong is by and large doing very well, it has concerns about Hong Kong having no extradition or mutual legal assistance arrangements with the mainland, Macau and Taiwan.

"I will tell the FATF next time they come, I have made an attempt. But somehow, we could not deliver it yet. But we will try it again if circumstances permit."

The SAR authorities have repeatedly stated that the murder of a Hong Kong woman in Taiwan last year flagged up a "loophole" in the city's legislation on extraditions.

The suspect for the murder – also a Hongkonger – flew back to the SAR after the killing, but officials say they are powerless under existing legislation to surrender a crime suspect to any other part of China.

However, critics of the planned law changes, including former British officials involved in Hong Kong's handover to China in 1997, say it was a deliberate move to rule out extraditions to the mainland and this restriction was to serve as a "firewall" between the judicial systems on either side of the border.

Opponents of the legal amendments say losing this firewall will put Hongkongers at risk of abuse under the mainland's notoriously opaque judicial system which Beijing says – by design – is not independent of the Chinese Communist Party.