In a statement which will doubtless surprise the scores of lawyers, democratic politicians and human rights activists who are currently in jail awaiting show trials under Hong Kong’s National Security Law, the UK Supreme Court today made an announcement which is the best piece of free PR that Hong Kong’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam has had in years.
The President of the Supreme Court, Lord Reed, has issued a statement saying that UK judges will be staying on Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal and that ‘the judiciary in Hong Kong continues to act largely independently of government and their decisions continue to be consistent with the rule of law.’
Lord Reed is one of Britain’s foremost legal minds which is why it is so troubling that he seems either inadvertently, or perhaps even wilfully, blind to the variety of insidious ways that the rule of law in Hong Kong has been compromised in the last year.
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