A senior British judge has announced she is to quit Hong Kong’s top court when her term ends, adding that there are “all sorts of question marks” over Beijing’s new National Security Law, British media reported yesterday.
Baroness Brenda Hale, the first female president of the British Supreme Court, is one of 13 foreign judges who are non-permanent members of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal.
Unlike mainland China, where the courts are beholden to the Chinese Communist Party, Hong Kong’s judicial system remains independent and based on common law — a major reason for its position as a global business hub.
Photo: AFP
Lawyers from common law jurisdictions are able to operate in the territory, while senior judges are invited to sit in its top court, but China’s imposition of the National Security Law last year has sparked concerns in some legal circles about whether judicial independence can be maintained.
The British government is currently reviewing whether to bar its judges from serving in the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal.
Hale mentioned the impact of the security law as she announced she would not seek a second term in the court when her tenure ends next month, the Times reported.
“The jury is out on how they will be able to operate the new National Security Law. There are all sorts of question marks up in the air,” the Times quoted Hale as telling a videoconference on Thursday. “I don’t wish to be reappointed.”
Hale, who headed Britain’s top court from 2017 to last year, said that there are serious concerns about the law, but argued that the remaining foreign judges were “keeping an eye on what’s going on there,” the Times said.
Once Hale steps down there would be nine British judges in the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal. The remainder hail from other common law jurisdictions such as South Africa and Australia.
The territory’s top judge, Hong Kong Chief Justice Andrew Cheung (張舉能), has said that the judiciary remains free from political interference.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
ACCESS DISPUTE: The blast struck a house, and set cars and tractors alight, with the fires wrecking several other structures and cutting electricity An explosion killed at least five people, including a pregnant woman and a one-year-old, during a standoff between rival groups of gold miners early on Thursday in northwestern Bolivia, police said, a rare instance of a territorial dispute between the nation’s mining cooperatives turning fatal. The blast thundered through the Yani mining camp as two rival mining groups disputed access to the gold mine near the mountain town of Sorata, about 150km northwest of the country’s administrative capital of La Paz, said Colonel Gunther Agudo, a local police officer. Several gold deposits straddle the remote area. Agudo had initially reported six people killed,
SUSPICION: Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing returned to protests after attending a summit at which he promised to hold ‘free and fair’ elections, which critics derided as a sham The death toll from a major earthquake in Myanmar has risen to more than 3,300, state media said yesterday, as the UN aid chief made a renewed call for the world to help the disaster-struck nation. The quake on Friday last week flattened buildings and destroyed infrastructure across the country, resulting in 3,354 deaths and 4,508 people injured, with 220 others missing, new figures published by state media showed. More than one week after the disaster, many people in the country are still without shelter, either forced to sleep outdoors because their homes were destroyed or wary of further collapses. A UN estimate
The US government has banned US government personnel in China, as well as family members and contractors with security clearances, from any romantic or sexual relationships with Chinese citizens, The Associated Press (AP) has learned. Four people with direct knowledge of the matter told the AP about the policy, which was put into effect by departing US ambassador Nicholas Burns in January shortly before he left China. The people would speak only on condition of anonymity to discuss details of a confidential directive. Although some US agencies already had strict rules on such relationships, a blanket “nonfraternization” policy, as it is known, has
RSS