Pan-dems Fear 'trojan Horse', Expert Allays Fears

The government's proposal to amend laws to allow extraditions to the mainland, Macau and Taiwan continues to evoke mixed reactions with opposition parties fearing misuse of the changes by the mainland authorities, while a legal expert played down such fears.

The pan-democratic camp said it is extremely concerned about the government's plan to amend laws making it easier for Hong Kong to hand over criminal suspects to other jurisdictions, including the mainland.

The convenor of the camp, Claudia Mo, said while officials insist there will be human rights safeguards in the arrangement to avoid political prosecutions, mainland authorities could always get around the issue.

"I know the Hong Kong government has implied that political cases will not be entertained, but we all know Beijing could always package ideological crimes in the form of economic offences," she said.

Another opposition lawmaker Eddie Chu warned that the proposal could "open Pandora's box".

"The Security Bureau's proposal has far-reaching consequences and must not be casually accepted," he wrote on Facebook.

But Professor Simon Young from the University of Hong Kong said he is confident that the proposed changes will provide sufficient human rights safeguards.

Young said the law refers to 46 description of offences and it does not describe any national security offences.

"I think the situation will be much better than now because we would then have a scheme of law governed by rule of law and human rights principles that would govern the return of people," he said. "So hopefully we wouldn't see people either being abducted or returned using immigration laws."

The professor said Hong Kong already has extradition treaties with countries that have the death penalty, like the United States.

"But the protocol is that we would insist that the death penalty be not applied and we would return the person only if sufficient assurances are given that the death penalty won't be applied," said Young.

He said the mainland had given such assurances in the case of the Lai Changxing who was returned by Canada in 2011.

Young told RTHK's Maggie Ho that worries that someone sent over to Hong Kong could then be surrendered to the mainland are misplaced as that would amount to "re-surrender".

"The existing safeguard for that is people would have another opportunity to leave Hong Kong before they could be resent or surrendered to another place," he said.

(Additional reporting by AFP)