'Govt Concessions On Extraditions Are Worthless'

The Hong Kong Bar Association on Thursday slated the government's latest attempts to ease concerns over planned new extradition laws, warning that they offer no protection to anyone who does business on or with the mainland.

The association, which had already strongly criticised the government's plans, said there was "no principled policy" behind the decision to only consider extraditions for crimes which warrant a prison term of seven years or more.

The threshold had originally been set at three years. But the government announced the amendment late last month, saying this would be written into the extradition bill, even though it means there could be no renditions for offences including child sex abuse and criminal intimidation.

"This further limitation contradicts the HKSARG’s stated grave concerns about injustice caused by the system’s loopholes in the community as well as doubts against the government’s commitment to combating serious cross-boundary crimes", the Bar Association said in a statement.

It noted that the threshold is set much lower in regular extradition agreements that have been signed, including with the UK, Canada and Australia, where it is imprisonment of just one year.

"The immunity given to persons accused of mainland crimes that carry less than seven years imprisonment does not make sense in legal policy terms," the association said.

In any case, the statement said, the bigger concern is that there are still many offences included in the bill, such as money laundering, blackmail, and bribery, that are "staple fare in extradition requests" and the protection for people doing business with the mainland is only "illusory".

The statement, released as hundreds of Hong Kong lawyers were holding a silent protest against the extradition bill, also said the pledges the government has made to seek human rights protections for people being extradited, such as promises of a fair trial and access to legal representation, are "highly unsatisfactory" as they won't be written into the legislation.

It said any undertakings in this regard by overseas jurisdictions would be unenforceable, and in the case of the mainland, it is doubtful that the Chief Executive would be in a position to turn down extradition requests if such promises had not been met.