Jailed rights lawyer and Tiananmen massacre vigil organizer Chow Hang-tung has hit out at Hong Kong’s most senior judges for their “complicity” in a “police state,” while denying claims by national security police that she and her fellow activists are foreign agents.
“A police state is created with the complicity of the court in endorsing [government] abuses,” Chow told the city’s Chief Justice Andrew Cheung at the city’s top appeal court. “Such complicity must stop now.”
Defending herself in court in a beige coat and sneakers, she made the comments during an appeal against a jail sentence for refusing to hand over information linked to vigil organizers the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China.
Chow also accused the city authorities of “trampling the dignity of the law to bolster the authority of the police.”
The Court of Final Appeal has seen an exodus of foreign judges in recent years amid warnings that the rule of law in the city has been compromised by an ongoing crackdown on public dissent under two national security laws.
Canadian Judge Beverley McLachlin stepped down last July, shortly after British judges Jonathan Sumption and Lawrence Collins also resigned, with Collins citing “the political situation” in the city.
Sumption penned an article saying judges are “intimidated” by the emphasis on security.
Facing more time
Chow, whose Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China organized the only public commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre for more than three decades until shortly after they were banned in 2020, has already served a 15-month jail term relating to the 2021 vigil.
Behind bars since September 2021, she also faces a potential 10 years in jail if convicted of a separate charge of “inciting subversion of state power” under the 2020 National Security Law.
Prosecutor Ivan Cheung told the court that it was enough for the city’s police chief to have a “reasonable belief” that the group counted as a foreign agent, without needing to prove it in court.
“To support a reasonable belief… the source needs not to be very detailed, the source needs not be named,” Cheung said. “Sometimes, [a] limited source can also be sufficient.”
Chow hit back, saying, “a police state is where the police are free to accuse anyone of being a foreign agent and the court is obliged to defer to that judgement even if that is clearly wrong.”
“We are not concerned with what is a police state,” Chief Justice Cheung replied.
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Chow had earlier accused Hong Kong’s courts of playing along with the illusion of the “emperor’s new clothes,” and denied that she or the Alliance had ever acted as a “foreign agent.”
“We say that the emperor has no clothes, and our opponent’s weak retort could only be that he doesn’t need clothes,” she wrote in a statement published by RFA Cantonese.
“Every court argument is like a naked parade; a form of repetitive self-humiliation,” she wrote. “Don’t be confused by seemingly complex legal arguments. To put it simply, the prosecution has ... gone rogue, and is trying to minimize what it has to prove legally.”
“Because they know that they can’t win based on the facts of the case ... Where’s the evidence? There’s not a ghost of it to be found.”
It remained to be seen whether the court would play along with the “lies of the national security police,” she said. “If the court decides to take off its clothes too, they may make their rulers happy ... but it will have lost its dignity.”
Chow smiled at her supporters in the public gallery, who applauded as she was led away by guards.
A decision on the appeal will be announced at a later date.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie.