Mr T
Senior Member
That's not the way that judges work. They're supposed to independently interpret and apply the law. If judges are just supposed to do what the CCP says, there's no point having court cases. The CCP could just hand down edicts convicting and sentencing people.
Is that genuinely what you want? You couldn't argue for having judges for propaganda value unless you were seeking to promote disinformation about how "fair" HK's justice system was when cases were decided beforehand.
I would need to know the name of the journalist to check, but are you sure that it was even a Commonwealth/non-HK resident judge that was involved in the case? Generally they tend to be involved in the appeal courts rather than the courts of first instance.
It depends whether you consider anything short of a 5-10 year jail sentence lenient. I'm not aware of him being convicted of anything previously, which would make it a first time offence - that normally leads to lighter sentencing. Also if he's cleared of fraud I wouldn't be surprised if a judge decides the "breach" of the national security law was trivial and therefore didn't require a harsh sentence.
It's up to the judge(s) to decide.
I mean, you clearly think that judges are there to serve the government and not decide cases on their merits. If that was the case in Hong Kong then most of those investors would have left by now, because even putting criminal cases aside if they came into dispute with HK regulators or officials in a civil case they'd have no chance of winning.
You can't have it both ways. You can't try to claim to bankers that judges will decide their cases fairly and it's only the "bad people" who will automatically lose.
As I said, that's the fault of the Chief Executives for appointing them. You should write a letter to Xi Jinping and demand he fire Carrie Lam for appointing any.
The UK government doesn't appoint judges that serve its interests. There's an independent body that deals with recruitment of judges. Indeed, when there were political grumblings about judges being biased about the government and perhaps Supreme Court justices should have US-style confirmation hearings (just to screen the judges, not appoint them) there was a shocked response and the idea was quietly binned.
So it's never been about foreign judges being biased, has it, it's about them being independent and sometimes not doing what the HK government wants.
How about this example. You obviously know Meng Wanzhou's case in Canada. Now, how would you have felt if the Canadian courts had gone "ok, the Canadian government wants extradition to take place, so we're going to dismiss her appeal quickly", dealt with the case in just one month and put her on a plane to the US?
Would you not mind because Canada has the right to do what Canada wants, even if it involves prominent Chinese citizens?
