Opinion

Hong Kong should trust its own judiciary on all extradition requests – whether or not they come from mainland China

The UK experience underlines how concerns about another territory’s rule-of-law record do not stop an extradition agreement from being reached

Effective extradition, which serves the interests of justice, must also be based on mutual trust

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Ronny Tong, SC, was chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association from 1999 to 2001, and was first elected a member of the Legislative Council in 2004.

Published: 9:00am, 3 Apr 2019Updated: 9:04am, 3 Apr 2019

It is a sad truth in Hong Kong that whatever initiative is proposed by the government, especially if it involves the Chinese government in some way, you can be sure it will be turned into a highly charged, irrational political debate in which conspiracy theories abound. The most recent proposal to amend the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance is no exception.

What is somewhat unusual is that, this time, the commercial sector has also waded into the mud bath. Certain prominent chambers of commerce and some opinion leaders in the community said they were “seriously concerned” that if the proposed amendment were to pass, Hong Kong would be able to extradite those accused or convicted of serious crimes to the mainland. This cannot be allowed to happen, they say, because the Chinese judicial system is very different from Hong Kong’s, and China’s rule-of-law record is so poor that a fair trial could not be guaranteed.

These critics, some of whom are seasoned lawyers, obviously have not read the existing law carefully, or at all, or fully understood the current extradition regime in Hong Kong.

The fact is that the existing Fugitive Offenders Ordinance was modelled after the UK equivalent and the UN model on extradition, and contains numerous human-rights and fair-trial safeguards, to be strictly applied by our judges, who are known to be of the highest standard.