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Law
OpinionComment
Ronny Tong
Ronny Tong

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

Reading Time:4 minutes
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Illustration: Craig Stephens
Ronny Tong
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.
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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.

However, the more troubling part is that the logic of those opposing the amendment is difficult to follow, to say the least. By definition, an extradition process is the transfer of a criminal from a home country to another country with a different judicial system. If one can only extradite a criminal to a country which has a superior record of rule of law, then many countries would not be able to employ any extradition process at all.

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