National security law: Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam vows not to hand-pick judges for cases brought under new legislation
- Lam says she will compile list of judges after consulting chief justice, adding that excluding foreign ones is ‘not realistic’
- Leader rejects calls to use only Chinese nationals to preside over cases, calling it unrealistic
Hong Kong’s leader on Tuesday promised not to hand-pick individual judges to oversee specific national security law cases, saying she would instead draw up a list after consulting the city’s chief justice.
But while Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor also rejected calls from the pro-Beijing camp to select only Chinese judges, her assurances failed to satisfy critics who have raised concerns that judicial independence would be undermined by her power to decide who should hear cases after the implementation of the new law.
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Security law opponents ‘enemies of the people’, says Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam
Speaking before the weekly meeting with her Executive Council, Lam said the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution, only required two judicial positions to be held by Chinese nationals – the chief justice of the Court of Final Appeal and the chief judge of the High Court.
“While many people have been advocating that only Chinese citizen judges should adjudicate over national security cases, this is simply not quite realistic, because we don’t know how many judges now sitting on the bench have foreign nationality,” Lam said.
Judges in Hong Kong are not required to disclose their nationality, but the judiciary keeps a record of their fluency in the city’s official languages.
