The legal profession’s troubling relationship with China

There has been considerable agonising in legal circles over the propriety of David Perry QC, who had accepted a brief to prosecute pro-democracy protestors in Hong Kong. One of the defendants in the case is the 82-year-old barrister Martin Lee QC, the founder of a pro-democracy party in Hong Kong, who has been accused of taking part in an ‘illegal assembly’.

It seems now that Perry, who has refused to make any public comment since the story broke, has now withdrawn from the case. If so he has made a wise decision.

He is not the only lawyer who has had to wrestle with the ethical question of how close you should get to regimes that most of us would regard as disagreeable or even evil. It is certainly not only a question faced by criminal lawyers. Geoffery Nice QC, who has conducted a meticulous investigation into the widespread and horrific practice of organ harvesting in China, has been very clear: anyone – lawyer, doctor or businessman – interacting in any substantial way with the People’s Republic of China ‘should