A judge in China’s top court has labeled US President Donald Trump an enemy “of the rule of law” over his insults directed at a US judge who temporarily blocked the president’s travel ban, adding that Trump had set a poor example as head of the world’s leading democracy.
Chinese Supreme People’s Court Judge He Fan’s (何帆) blog post came after Trump on Saturday on Twitter called US District Judge James Robart a “so-called judge” whose “ridiculous” decision opened the country to potential terror attacks.
In his post, dated on Sunday, He wrote that under the US system’s separation of powers, a president who is dealt a judicial defeat should bear the loss silently rather than lash out at the judge in question.
Photo: Greg Lehman/Whitman College via AP
The widely reported controversy surrounding Trump’s ban follows recent remarks by China’s top judge that the concept of judicial independence was an “erroneous Western ideal” unsuited to China — seen as a demand for obedience from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders.
Those comments have reignited a debate on the topic within China’s legal community, which is in general tightly bound to uphold the party line.
He, an expert on the US justice system, did not voice his thoughts in that debate, although he frequently offers opinions on matters foreign and domestic.
He published a lengthy and widely read paean to former US Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia after his death last year.
He said Trump had set a poor example and lost respect for having “led the way in insulting a judge, with the vice president and his political party swarming to his defense [and] in a country known as the most democratic and most respectful of the rule of law.”
“The president who would curse a judge and the thug who would kill a judge are both public enemies of the rule of law,” He wrote, referencing the recent murder of a retired judge in southern China.
“Who cares that you control the armed forces and have nuclear weapons at your disposal. Your dignity has been swept away and you are no different than a scoundrel,” He wrote.
Trump had been considered by many in China as preferable to Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was seen as taking a harder line toward Beijing. However, Trump has also raised concerns over his comments on Taiwan, trade and other issues seen as diverging from long-established US policy toward China.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to