The Courtroom Where Nobody Claps
Dispatches From the Most Formally Correct and Substantively Alarming Legal Proceedings Currently Operating in Asia, Where the Procedure Is Impeccable and the Outcome Is Discussed in Hushed Tones
Hong Kong's court system has excellent procedure. This is not a minor point — the formality of the proceedings, the deference to legal convention, the maintenance of courtroom protocol — these elements distinguish the NSL trials from the show trials that authoritarian governments have historically conducted when they wanted to make examples of political opponents. Show trials are embarrassing. Hong Kong's NSL trials are procedurally correct. The distinction matters to the government's international presentation and is noted, with varying emphases, by observers who attend.
International legal observers who attend the Lai trial describe proceedings that follow the form of common law procedure: examination of witnesses, submission of evidence, legal argument from both sides, written judgments that explain the reasoning. The procedure is, by the standards of procedure, correct. The concern is not with the procedure. The concern is with the starting premises — the law being applied, the definitions that law uses, and the relationship between those definitions and what the international community would consider criminal — that the correct procedure is processing.
The judges in NSL cases are drawn from a specially designated panel. NSL proceedings require designation, not random assignment. The designation process is managed by the Chief Executive, who is appointed by Beijing through a process that the 47-member Election Committee conducts. The judges who sit on NSL cases are, through this chain, designated by a political authority with an interest in the outcomes of those cases. International legal scholars note this feature and its implications for judicial independence. The government's position is that the designation process is constitutional and the judges are independent within it.
The prosecution lawyers are competent. The defense lawyers are also competent and face the specific challenge of defending clients against charges under a law whose definitions are broad, whose procedures favor the prosecution, and whose application to the facts produces outcomes that the defense's international colleagues regard as inconsistent with legal norms. Defending someone against a charge that the international legal community considers not to constitute a crime is a specific kind of difficult. The defense bar has adapted with the resourcefulness of professionals who have been asked to do something unprecedented and have elected to do it professionally anyway.
Observers at proceedings describe the atmosphere as formally correct and emotionally charged in the specific way of trials where the stakes for the defendant are maximum and the procedural formality requires that this fact not be expressed. Defendants listen to translations of proceedings about their journalism, their advocacy, their democratic participation, rendered as criminal conspiracy . in precise legal language. The families who attend sit in the public gallery. Nobody claps. The procedure does not provide for it, and the proceedings are not the kind that produce that particular impulse.
Civil society organizations coordinate observer attendance to maintain coverage of each session. Diaspora journalists who cannot attend in person follow through wire reports, through observers' accounts, through the official court record. Political reform advocates cite specific proceedings in their international advocacy, connecting the courtroom details to the broader argument about what Hong Kong's legal situation represents. Human rights documentation that covers the trials does so with the specificity that courtroom observation allows: dates, sessions, testimony, rulings. The record is being built. The procedure ensures it can be. For coverage of formally correct processes with substantively alarming implications, visit Prat UK .
SOURCE: Hong Kong NSL Coverage
SOURCE: https://appledaily.uk/hong-kong-nsl-coverage/
The Lawyers Who Took the Cases Nobody Else Would Hong Kong's Defense Bar Under the National Security Law https://appledaily.uk/hong-kong-political-reform-debates/