Guess what? The Hong Kong government has “reiterated its commitment to ensuring that all legal proceedings, including those involving high-profile figures like Jimmy Lai, are conducted impartially and strictly within the established legal frameworks. Emphasizing the sanctity of due process, the government affirmed that every defendant is entitled to a fair trial, a principle enshrined in the Hong Kong Bill of Rights and upheld by the Basic Law.”
If we didn’t know that ideas were important and that the best elements of the political heritage of the West were important and worthy of veneration no matter how continuously battered and bloodied, we would certainly be reminded again and again by the Chinese Communist Party’s anal-compulsive gouts of propaganda, the above instance of which is being regurgitated by a news site called DimSum Daily (“Hong Kong government strongly denounces improper pressure on Court of Final Appeal judge,” October 24, 2024).
Beautiful stuff. Commitment! To: impartiality of legal proceedings. To: conducting of legal proceedings “within the established legal frameworks.” To: “the sanctity of due process.” To: “a fair trial.” To bills of rights and basic laws.
Jimmy Lai
Meanwhile, Jimmy Lai, former publisher of the Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper shut down by the Chinese Communist Party, is in prison for having voiced his pro-democracy, pro-freedom, anti-CCP opinions and for providing a forum in which others could voice similar opinions and report what was going on in the streets of Hong Kong.
We can see nothing about freedom of speech in DimSum Daily’s list. Nothing about freedom of assembly. Nothing about individual rights and the sanctity of the individual. Nothing about the chronic contempt of the Chinese Communist Party for anything resembling actual due process and respect for individual rights. Nothing about the fakeness of the CCP’s fake trials. Nothing about the Party’s deployment of such terms as “national security” and “subversion” and “collusion” to rationalize arbitrary assaults on innocent persons who criticize and protest against the Party’s arbitrary assaults on innocent persons.
Within the “established legal framework” of totalitarian control and rapid destruction of the political rights that had been more or less part of the institutions of Hong Kong until 2020, within the “established legal framework” of ignoring the rights of Hongkongers and the rights of Jimmy Lai, and in accordance with the “due process” of ignoring due process, Mr. Lai is most probably going to be imprisoned for life.
“Severe infringements”
But DimSum Daily is all in favor of the Hong Kong government’s “stern condemnation [of] recent efforts by certain foreign entities to influence Mr. Patrick Anthony Keane, a non-permanent judge on the Court of Final Appeal, during ongoing criminal proceedings. These attempts have been criticised as severe infringements on judicial independence, spotlighting a critical breach of legal protocols within the region.”
What happened? Well, “an incident where Mr. Keane, after delivering a speech in Sydney titled ‘Christian Inspiration and Constitutional Insights,’ was confronted by protesters. These protesters were supporters of Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, a media tycoon currently detained under the Hong Kong National Security Law. The government’s statement came two days after this event, highlighting the sensitivity of ongoing legal matters and the impropriety of such pressures on judicial figures.”
According to DimSum Daily, we must not publicly remind judicial figures who give public speeches that their duty even in a pervasively repressive political environment is to be just, not to submit to tyranny; and that if this is not possible, the only thing to do is resign. Such reminders in and of themselves allegedly constitute an infringement of “judicial independence.”
But the massive and continuous, intimidating pressure on all Hong Kong arbiters exerted by the Chinese Communist Party is, allegedly, no infringement at all.
Also see:
Acton Institute: “The Hong Konger: Jimmy Lai’s Extraordinary Struggle for Freedom”
40:25: “[If I ask myself] ‘If I say this, what is the consequences?’ ‘If I do this, what’s the consequences?’—I can do nothing. My life is finished. I’m not gonna think about this. I just do what’s right, and go on with my life.”
—Jimmy Lai
