Senior Hong Kong lawyers expressed alarm on Sunday at plans for the city's leader to select judges for national security cases, calling it the most serious challenge to the territory's vaunted judicial independence since the 1997 handover to Chinese rule.
HONG KONG - Senior Hong Kong lawyers expressed alarm on Sunday at plans for the city’s leader to select judges for national security cases, calling it the most serious challenge to the territory’s vaunted judicial independence since the 1997 handover to Chinese rule.
As well as heading a new local national security council supervised by Beijing officials, the city’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam will also have the power to appoint judges to hear cases under the law. The city’s common law-based legal system is widely seen as the bedrock of that formula, underpinning its status as a global financial hub.
While pro-Beijing figures have demanded special courts and called for foreign judges - a long-standing tradition in Hong Kong - to be barred from national security cases, the new plan had not surfaced locally.
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