The extradition bill is yet another result of Beijing’s political encroachment

From the Umbrella Movement onwards, Beijing has had an aggressive upper hand on Hong Kong politics more than ever before

There has been significant international attention to the extradition bill in Hong Kong. This bill, also known as the Fugitive Offenders and Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, will allow fugitives to be tried between Mainland China, Macau and Hong Kong if passed. However, this bill is yet another sign of Beijing’s dangerous political encroachment of Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong government cited a homicide case in Taiwan of a 19-year old man killing his pregnant girlfriend while on holiday in Taiwan in order to support the bill and said that Hong Kong should not be “crime haven” for fugitives. The proposed amendment will not only grant an extradition treaty between Hong Kong and Taiwan but Macao and Mainland China.

The bill, if passed would allow Mainland China to transfer fugitives between the Mainland, Macao and Hong Kong. Critics fear the treatment of fugitives and the possible abuse of the Bill, which goes against human rights conventions.

Beijing’s has always had political authority over Hong Kong but recent years have shown that its overt political dominance is increasing.

A fine example would be the missing bookseller case in Causeway Bay in 2015, where 5 booksellers were kidnapped overnight due to selling anti-communist books in Hong Kong. This is a blatant violation of the “One Country, Two Systems” principle, under which Hong Kong is supposed to have a “high degree of autonomy”, where it would have separate legislature and a separate judiciary, which will comprise of a separate criminal justice system, under which people who are found to be criminal offenders, would be tried.

On 29 February 2016, Lee Bo, one of the booksellers, returned to Hong Kong, where he gave a televised interview on Phoenix Television, where he said that he “resorted to illegal immigration” to get to the mainland “to cooperate in a judicial investigation” which was identical of a story in the letters published by Sing Tao, a local newspaper. He denied that he was kidnapped and remained tight-lipped about his entry to Mainland China.

However, Lam Wing-kee, the last of the kidnapped booksellers revealed that he had been kidnapped in a press conference. Lee claimed that he was abducted by mainland officials at the Hong Kong-China border control in Shenzhen on 24 October 2015. He said this:

Last year on October 24, I was crossing the Shenzhen immigration point to visit my girlfriend in Dongguan when I was detained by Shenzhen officers.

“When they detained me, I asked them what I had done wrong. I pressed them for an answer for the whole day, but no one was able to tell me [what I had done wrong].” — Lam Wing Kee, one of the missing booksellers

He also revealed that he had been handcuffed, blindfolded and transported, to Ningbo, a city in the northeastern province of Zhejiang. In addition, he also said that his confession, which he had given on mainland Chinese television was forced and that Lee Bo, was “taken away from Hong Kong”, and was also forced to make a televised confession.

The oath-taking controversy is a landmark of a case in showing the political dominance of Beijing. The 2016 by-elections in the Legislative Council was marred with controversy after the HKSAR government, under the suggestion of Beijing, required candidates to sign a “confirmation form” where every candidate had to confess that was an inalienable part of China, to which many of the localist candidates, who advocate self-determination of Hong Kong refused to agree upon. There was a spectacle in the Legislative Council, where localist candidates deliberately dismissed the oath by adding their own words, which led to the disqualification of 6 localist candidates from office.

And the iconic Umbrella Movement in 2014, which equally enjoyed international fervor and coverage was yet another chance for China to unleash its political prowess over Hong Kong. The protests gained traction after Beijing’s controversial interpretation of Article 45, which stipulates that the Chief Executive, ultimately should be voted through universal suffrage, through a “broadly representative nominating committee in accordance with democratic procedures”. Beijing demanded that there should be a political screening “where the Chief Executive shall be a person who loves the country and loves Hong Kong” and decided to keep the undemocratic process of electing the CE, which ignited the 79-day protest.

Under the current Fugitive Offenders Ordinance or FOO, one-off, case-based arrangements are “potentially available to all jurisdictions with which Hong Kong has no long-term arrangements except the rest of the PRC”, according to the Hong Kong Bar Association.

The HKBA has added that there was no “loophole” as it was asserted by the Chief Executive, the Secretary for Justice and the Secretary for Security, and that it was a “deliberate decision” by the legislature to not to apply the FOO to the rest of the PRC based on the fact that Mainland China and Hong Kong had fundamentally different criminal justice systems and that the Mainland track record on the protection of fundamental rights was subject to question.

The very basis on which the extradition law has been built — due to a homicide case in Taiwan, has been dismissed by the island nation itself, which said that it would not agree to prosecute the offender if the extradition bill is passed and is ready for a case-based ad-hoc agreement, which can be done without the proposed Bill.

The Taiwan Government is clear in its position that it “would not sign any extradition deal with Hong Kong that would have implications for the one-China principle under which both Beijing and Taipei claim to be the legitimate government of China”.

Although Carrie Lam has “paused” the Bill, the enactment of the Bill would be disastrous to Hong Kong’s reputation and will no longer adopt the “One Country, Two Systems” principle as it seems that Beijing has been fixated on the “one country”, which echoes in its actions in recent years.