Govt Makes Bill Tweaks, Pledge On Extraditions

The government has announced further changes to its contentious extradition law bill, introducing two concessions requested by the business community and pro-Beijing lawmakers, and pledging to look at a number of ways to safeguard the rights of crime suspects when individual deals are made with other jurisdictions under the legislation.

Security Secretary John Lee said rather than allowing extraditions for crimes which carry a maximum punishment of three years in prison, this will be increased to seven years behind bars.

He noted that this means extraditions under the new legislation would now not be possible for crimes involving criminal intimidation, child pornography or underage sex.

He also said that extradition requests from the mainland would only be entertained if they come from the Supreme People's Procuratorate – the highest national level organ responsible for criminal investigation and prosecution – rather than any provincial authorities.

As well as these two changes to the bill, Lee said the government would work on introducing additional safeguards when it comes to the rights of people surrendered to other jurisdictions.

He said the SAR would seek to obtain various guarantees before agreeing to an extradition, such as that suspects would be allowed an open trial and with legal representation, that they wouldn't be forced to make a confession, and that they could appeal against the judgement eventually handed down.

The security chief said that once the legislation is passed, the government will also seek talks with Beijing to discuss whether any extradited Hongkongers found guilty of crimes on the mainland could be sent back to the SAR to serve their prison sentences.

The announcement on Thursday evening came just hours after 39 pro-establishment lawmakers sent a letter to the administration calling for the same two amendments regarding the punishment threshold and only accepting mainland extradition requests from the central authorities.

But similar proposals had already been made by the local business sector, who weren't satisfied with earlier concessions which saw a reduction in the number of types of economic crimes that could warrant an extradition.

Already anticipating the latest changes to the proposed legislation, the pro-democracy camp had made it clear that they don't regard such tweaks as acceptable and are still demanding that the bill be withdrawn completely.

The camp says changing the law to allow extraditions on a case-by-case basis will result in political dissidents from Hong Kong being handed over to the mainland, while any genuine criminals sent across the border would be unlikely to get a proper trial.

The government says unless the legal changes are made, Hong Kong will become a haven for foreign criminals.