Hong Kong’s security chief attacks Guardian newspaper over Jimmy Lai claim

Hong Kong’s security minister has hit out at a British news outlet for “smearing remarks” made in an article about the top court’s rejection of an appeal by former media boss Jimmy Lai Chee-ying over the hiring of a foreign lawyer.

Secretary for Security Chris Tang Ping-keung on Sunday wrote to The Guardian to defend the Court of Final Appeal’s recent rejection of Lai’s appeal over an earlier decision to stop his preferred British lawyer, King’s Counsel Timothy Owen, from representing him.

Headlined “The obscure Jimmy Lai ruling that exposed the erosion of Hong Kong’s rule of law”, the article published on March 22 discussed the implications of the court’s decision by quoting several legal experts, including former United Kingdom supreme court judge Jonathan Sumption and ex-chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association Paul Harris.

They said the rule of law in Hong Kong was “profoundly compromised” and the fact the decisions made by the national security committee could not be legally challenged “effectively gives the committee the powers of a police state”.

Lai won approval for Owen to represent him in 2022, and the government lost its appeals to block the move.

Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu then sought an interpretation of the national security law by the country’s top legislative body, which later gave the city’s leader and the national security committee the final say on the matter, with the decisions of the latter not open to judicial review.

In January 2023, the committee decided in a closed-door meeting that the involvement of Owen in Lai’s case was likely to undermine national security and that it would advise the Immigration Department to dismiss any of the Briton’s applications for a work visa. Lai’s multiple attempts to challenge the decision over the past two years were unsuccessful.