Civil Service Secretary Ingrid Yeung urges everyone to vote. Slight twist: the video also features a guy echoing her message in Indonesian, complete with hand grenade. Different!
A Domino Theory op-ed criticizes the pace of justice for Jimmy Lai, Chow Hang-tung and others…
Since the crackdown on the democracy movement in Hong Kong in 2020, a disturbing phenomenon has emerged. Political prisoners, accused of crimes that are no crime at all but simply normal participation in what was supposed to be a free society, are not even able to access the twisted version of legal process that is still afforded them.
Instead, they wait in jail without bail for years for trials that do not come, and then for verdicts that are not announced. Jimmy Lai (黎智英), publisher of the pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, and Chow Hang-tung (鄒幸彤), the lawyer and activist, are but two of the individuals hanging in limbo in these circumstances.
…“For ordinary common law criminal trials in Hong Kong, there is always a presumption of bail that if a defendant unless he’s seen as committing a serious crime or the court deemed the defendant has this possibility to abscond from trial,” Eric Lai [of Georgetown law school] said. But for national security trials, “this principle is totally subverted to presumption against bail.”
…There are examples in other cases, Eric Lai said, of the prosecution repeatedly asking for adjournments to prepare more submissions and documents before the trial started. This has been allowed by the court despite the objections of the defendants.
If someone was held without bail and without trial in a common law jurisdiction, they would typically have grounds to have their case thrown out because of abuse of process, Eric Lai said. The fact that they have not been shows “the mass arrests as well as the massive use of pretrial detention against these people is more a political act rather than a legal act.” Eric Lai also pointed out that after long pretrial detentions, many political prisoners end up pleading guilty or even turning prosecution witness…
A technically proficient, imagery-heavy mural by Hong Kong artists in California.
Captain Obvious reports from the front lines:
“The mass arrests as well as the massive use of pretrial detention against these people is more a political act rather than a legal act.”
But, but, but…it says right there, in black and white, in the Chinese Constitution and the Basic Law, that individual rights and the rule of law shall be observed scrupulously!
Ha! We’ve got them on the run now!
Complete exoneration is right around the corner!
Am I allowed to explain to my domestic helper, should she encourage me to go to the election station what the difference is between an election in Indonesia and an election in the Hongkong of the New Era?
And BTW, have we all noticed how racist Hong Kong has become? Not a single Gweilo candidate. Most election material only in Chinese? Isn’t English still an official language?