The Hong Kong government’s ongoing push to change the city’s extradition laws has stoked unease among pro-democracy lawmakers and activists, as well as foreign diplomats and the international business community. If amendments backed by Chief Executive Carrie Lam are passed, fugitives captured in the special administrative region could be sent to mainland China for trial, a precedent that lawyers and judges have called a stark challenge to the city’s British-based common law system through which extraditions hinge on the presumption of a fair trial.
Opposition lawmakers in Hong Kong, as well as democracy activists, have objected to the proposal, pointing to China’s poor human rights record and flawed criminal justice system, where conviction rates are over 99% and arrested people are often subject to arbitrary charges and held incommunicado in extrajudicial detention for months.
