On May 14, a farce played out in the British Parliament. The US-based Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong (CFHK) Foundation released a report claiming that the 10 overseas judges who serve as nonpermanent judges of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (HKCFA) were lending legitimacy to a crackdown on political freedoms in Hong Kong. The event was hosted by Alistair Carmichael, a parliamentarian who is well-known in the UK’s anti-China circles.
The CFHK is closely involved in stoking hostility toward China in the US, where its views are welcomed whenever Sinophobes gather. It specializes in myth-making about Hong Kong, and insinuates itself into China-related hearings of the US Congress. Its latest report, titled “Lending Prestige to Persecution: How Foreign Judges are Undermining Hong Kong’s Freedoms and Why They Should Quit”, is a crude hatchet job. It is designed to weaken one of the most professional judiciaries in the Asia-Pacific region, but nobody should be surprised.
The CFHK president is Mark Clifford, a former director of Apple Daily’s parent company, Next Digital. He has campaigned for the release of his former employer, Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, and his name has featured in Lai’s ongoing national security trial, for conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and seditious activity. On Jan 17, 2024, he said of the trial, “Every day of this kangaroo court provides new evidence that the Chinese Communist Party and its helpers are guilty — guilty of undercutting the freedom enshrined in the principle of ‘one country, two systems’ and the vow that Hong Kong’s way of life would continue for 50 years after China’s 1997 takeover.”
Clifford’s hatred of China’s governance is visceral, and he has stuffed the CFHK with like-minded bigots. One such is the national security fugitive, Frances Hui Wing-ting, for whom the Hong Kong Police Force issued a bounty of HK$1million ($128,000). She styles herself as CFHK’s “policy and advocacy coordinator” and has called on the international community “to fight against the CCP’s transnational repression, interference and international human rights abuses”.
On Feb 15, 2024, when Hui appeared before the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, the topic under consideration was “Transnational Repression Committed by Hong Kong and People’s Republic of China”. After boasting how, in 2021, she had become the “first Hong Kong activist to secure asylum in the United States”, she produced a wish list for the US government to consider. It included sanctions for “bad actors”, encouraging Interpol to disregard requests by “authoritarian regimes” for the arrest of “political dissidents”, and the closure of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Offices. With ideological hang-ups like these, she is clearly one of the CFHK’s rising stars.
However, as against that, Clifford has also recruited some has-beens from Hong Kong, presumably as a favor to old friends. On its advisory board is none other than Steve Vines, who also advises the UK-based Hong Kong Watch, the anti-China hate machine operated by the serial fantasist Benedict Rogers. He is perhaps best remembered as the journalist who ran away from Hong Kong in 2021 for reasons best known to himself. He now spends his days denigrating China to anybody prepared to give him the time of day.
By publishing this report, CFHK wants to undermine the judiciary. As Clifford knows, this will weaken Hong Kong and be bad for China. However, the judiciary has upheld the rule of law in good times and bad and its judges are all of the highest quality. They will ignore the rantings of Bickett and Fong and continue to dispense justice without fear or favor. This report not only demeans its authors, but also debases its facilitators, including Clifford and Carmichael
The CFHK report was co-authored by its public affairs and advocacy manager (UK and Ireland), Alyssa Fong, and, bizarrely, Samuel Bickett, an American lawyer who undoubtedly took the lead, given his legal training and legendary bile. After serving a prison sentence at Stanley Prison for assaulting a police officer during the troubles in 2019, Bickett was deported to the US in 2022. His appeal to the High Court was rejected by Justice Esther Toh Lye-ping, who found “no merit in any of the grounds of appeal against conviction”. When he sought to challenge his conviction before the HKCFA, he was given short shrift.
Since his deportation, Bickett, who now calls himself a “Hong Kong human rights activist”, has nursed a grievance against the Hong Kong judicial system, making him invaluable to the likes of Clifford, in the US, and Rogers, in the UK. He even appeared before the US Congress to urge that punitive sanctions be imposed on the city’s judges and prosecutors. It beggars belief that CFHK could have imagined that anything written by this hate-filled fanatic could ever be taken seriously, but judgment has never been Clifford’s forte.
Even though the HKCFA’s overseas judges include former presidents of the UK Supreme Court (Lords Phillips and Neuberger), Canada’s former chief justice (Justice Mclachlin), and former chief justices of the Federal Court of Australia (justices Keane and Allsop), Bickett had the gall to allege they had “lent support to grave human rights violations”. He even claimed to “know firsthand how the judiciary supports the regime by manipulating evidence and processes against dissidents”. If nothing else, this showed the extent to which he remains in denial over his crime.
In one ugly slur, Bickett criticized the overseas judges for not disclosing what his press release called their “compensation from the Hong Kong government” (a matter for the tax authorities, not CFHK). He called for the British law lords to be held to account by the House of Lords, displaying the outsider’s typical ignorance of how that body functions. He sifted through the judgments of the overseas judges and made scurrilous allegations about their professionalism. He even called for judges to be penalized by their home countries in the future if they take up judicial appointments in Hong Kong, which came straight out of cloud cuckoo land.
If Clifford were not so keen on maligning China, he would entrust his assignments to people who had at least some claim to credibility.
However, one individual was eager to give Bickett’s bilge the time of day, for reasons not hard to fathom. Alistair Carmichael made parliamentary facilities available for the report’s launch, oblivious to its defects. As a Hong Kong Watch patron, his bias is notorious, but that is only part of the story.
The real giveaway is that Carmichael is also the chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hong Kong (APPG), a grouping that has disgraced British notions of fair play. As parliamentary records have revealed, the APPG is covertly funded by “Fight for Freedom: Stand with Hong Kong” (SWHK), the subversive entity that tried to wreck the “one country, two systems” policy during the insurrection of 2019-20. It still peddles malicious propaganda about China in London and elsewhere, designed to harm Hong Kong.
Moreover, Carmichael’s role in the APPG’s so-called “inquiry” in 2020 into the conduct of the Hong Kong Police Force during the riots can never be forgotten nor forgiven. The result was preordained and the inquiry was a travesty of justice, paid for by SWHK. It was a low point in recent parliamentary history, and the use of parliament’s facilities for the launch of the CFHK’s vile attack on the Hong Kong judiciary is no less reprehensible.
By publishing this report, CFHK wants to undermine the judiciary. As Clifford knows, this will weaken Hong Kong and be bad for China. However, the judiciary has upheld the rule of law in good times and bad and its judges are all of the highest quality. They will ignore the rantings of Bickett and Fong and continue to dispense justice without fear or favor. This report not only demeans its authors, but also debases its facilitators, including Clifford and Carmichael.
In 2023, when the highly regarded former chief justice of the Federal Court of Australia, Patrick Keane, was appointed a nonpermanent judge of the HKCFA, he explained his decision to serve. He noted “how successful” the court has been in “upholding the rule of law”. It had a long history as “a very successful institution that’s made an important contribution to the success of Hong Kong”. Strangely, Keane’s comments are not featured in the CFHK’s report. One can only wonder why.
The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
