In May, a court rejected Lai’s bid to halt his security trial on grounds that it was being heard by judges picked by Hong Kong’s leader. That is a departure from the common law tradition China promised to preserve for 50 years after the former British colony returned to China in 1997.
Don’t tell me that British laws are actually that corrupt. No way, right?
It’s a departure from the common law tradition. Furthermore common law is a completely different concept from British laws.
I’m not sure I understand your question.
Hong Kong’s leader handpicked judges because the UK does it as well. This sounds very corrupt, but maybe it sounds normal for the Brits.
You need to work on your reading comprehension. The UK government does not ‘handpick’ judges for cases and under Hong among common law the Chinese government wasn’t meant to either.
So how are they picked?
Hong Kong’s common law tradition is entirely a colonialist imposition. Worse, common law doesn’t apply to modern national security regimes. The US is a common law nation, but it has secret courts, enemy combatants designations, secret evidence, secret charges, and the federal court system has significant departures.
The idea that a national security proceeding in China should be constrained by thousand-year old precedent set in England is not just ridiculous it is a particular kind of white imperialist ridiculous.
Do you think that having the political leader hand pick a panel judges to try someone and do away with jury trial is a good idea then? Particularly when the defendant has a history of annoying said political leader? You don’t think it might be rather open to abuse?
Abuse. Abuse. You are worried about abuse? How about the occupation of Hong Kong, the attempt to extend occupation, and then, upon determining that the occupation could not be extended, doing everything in your power to create strife, division, conditions for counter-revolution and secessionary movements, and maintaining as much political and economic influence over the territory as possible?
Do you think that might be open to abuse? How would you solve that problem? What sorts of solutions exist in the imperial world for resolving this sort of problem?
What you don’t seem to grasp is that One Country, Two Systems entails One National Defense. Collaboration with Western imperialists who have subjugated China for centuries is going to be handled by the One Country, not the Two Systems. Unlike the imperial holdings of the West, however, Hong Kong is actually democratically integrated into China. Ask Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, etc how democracy is working out for them?
You also aren’t actually analyzing the bureaucratic workings of China’s legal system and aren’t steeped in their history, traditions, and precedent. You are reading a Western spin on what’s actually happening. You can’t read Chinese, so you can’t read Chinese law. You can’t actually engage with Chinese events at the same level of detail and analysis that you can of English, American, Canadian, and Australian events. So, forgive me if I don’t find your arguments compelling, since they amount to accusing Xi of being an autocrat in what is demonstrably a democratic institution operating a rules-based bureaucratic system that has a decade-long 95% national approval while simultaneously operating the most complex multi-ethnic country in the history of the world including autonomous regions wherein ethnic nations experience a greater degree of cultural self-expression and self-governance than anything the West has ever produced. Clearly, if China worked the way you think it does Xi would be calling all the shots and people would be discontent and the governing of 1.4 billion people of 57 ethnicities would be coming apart at the seams. Instead we see that it is France, UK, and USA that is falling apart dealing with far fewer people and with far less ethnic diversity and with far less ethnic autonomy. Something in your analysis is fundamentally flawed.
Back to your point about abuse, though, should you be worried about abuse of power in China? Is that where your energy should be going? Does China operate 600 military bases globally? Does China operate extrajudicial torture chambers all over the world? Does China launch new wars of aggression every few years? Does China deploy chemical and nuclear weapons that continue to kill thousands of babies the world over for decades? Does China suppress language and culture of people living in its borders in a continuously unbroken 600-year genocide?
As far as I can tell, all systems have corruption, all systems have abuse of power - it’s the essence of governing systems that they are this way. What we should be worried about is actual abuses, not potential abuses. Worrying about potential abuses allows you to focus on China while the USA kills millions, tortures with impunity, trains terrorists and death squads, and sows death and destruction everywhere it goes. Focus on the problem. China’s not the problem.
You are misunderstanding what it means. The article specifically about this explains it better:
When Hong Kong returned to China in 1997, it was promised that trials by jury, previously practiced in the former British colony, would be maintained under the city’s constitution. But in a departure from the city’s common law tradition, the security law allows no-jury trials for national security cases.
Which is also the standard the world over
It’s absolutely not. There used to be right to trial by jury in all cases in Hong Kong before China took it away, which is what this article is about. So already it’s clearly not the “world standard.” Another example, United States routinely holds jury trials with classified national defense information and goes to great lengths to create a system to do this, since there is a constitutional guarantee to a trial by Jury. Process explained in this article: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/14/trump-trial-classified-documents-public-00102023 in regards to the trump case, which is a great example involving highly sensitive national security information. And that involves a jury too. I’d say you could just search online yourself and find out how wrong you are, but i doubt you’re arguing in good faith. So as you can see, the standard in China is not the same thing as the standard “the world over.” This was a right forcibly removed from the people of Hong Kong by China.
Take your authoritarian apologist made up nonsense elsewhere.
LOL, unironically accusing me of authoritarian apologia because I am for the reintegration of a former British colonial holding with the country the British stole it from.
What is the context behind this?
2019 HK protests and CCP’s crackdown on its free press.
I know that, what did this guy actually do?
The case against him is for collusion with foreign forces to undermine national security.
That is a very different thing from simply being “pro democracy”, they charged rioters in the US with this excuse and they were also calling themselves pro democracy.
Still can’t find a clear answer to my question on Google, smells weird to me.
It’s difficult to find information on Google because vague terms like “pro-democracy” are used leaving the readers to imagine what it means.
I got what I told you from this Reuters article: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/national-security-trial-hong-kong-pro-democracy-tycoon-postponed-next-sept-2022-12-13/
Free Julian Assange! ✊
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They have a whole page dedicated to him: https://apnews.com/hub/julian-assange
I also get a chuckle when people attack the AP. I guess non profit collectives are threatening to communists. ;)
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Hexbear sees something they disagree with and cleverly evades thinking by blaming the CIA.
Hmm so you’re agreeing that even free speech and democracy will not stop authoritarianism?
