Grenville Cross

Opinion | Hong Kong’s prosecutors will not bow to intimidation amid threat of US sanctions

Call by US lawmakers to punish the justice secretary and 15 prosecutors for their work on national security and protest-related cases is a shocking violation of international norms and an affront to criminal justice

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Hong Kong’s prosecutors may be alarmed over the CECC’s intimidatory tactics, but they are men and women of honour, and will not buckle. Photo: SCMP/Shutterstock

Grenville Cross

Published: 1:30am, 17 Jul 2022

The US Congressional-Executive Committee on China (CECC) was established in 2000, after the normalisation of trade relations with China. It purports to monitor human rights and rule of law issues in China. As China’s world role has expanded, the committee has become increasingly hostile, as its July 12 “staff research report” shows.

It comprises 17 commissioners, drawn from the US Senate and House of Representatives. They include Marco Rubio, who once urged the Nobel Peace Prize Committee to give its cherished award to the leaders of Hong Kong’s protest movement, and Vicky Hartzler, who made headlines last May when, with six other Republican Congressional members, she urged President Joe Biden to sanction Hong Kong judges and prosecutors involved in handling national security cases.

The committee has now called for Secretary for Justice Paul Lam Ting-kwok and 15 of his public prosecutors to face punitive measures because of their involvement in prosecuting individuals suspected of committing national security and protest-related crimes.

The CECC has sought to intimidate them even though they are neither lawmakers nor politicians. Although this is a violation of international norms and an affront to criminal justice, it is not the first time the US has threatened independent prosecutors in recent times.

On September 2, 2020, then-president Donald Trump imposed sanctions on the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, and her deputy, Phakiso Mochochoko, because he objected to their investigation into whether American personnel had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan.

Although Bensouda, by virtue of the UN’s Rome Statute, was required to pursue this investigation, Trump imagined he could bully her and her staff into desisting. This, of course, was grossly improper, and once Biden became president, he rescinded the sanctions. He will also hopefully disregard the CECC’s latest report, as he did the earlier request by Hartzler’s group of seven.