CE: CA rulings ‘appropriate response to unlawful acts’

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor stressed on Monday that the two recent sentence-review cases which led to radical activists going to jail were not political persecutions but an appropriate response to unlawful acts in accordance with the law.

Expressing her “extreme regrets” about the attacks on the city’s prosecutors and judicial independence, Lam reiterated two of the city’s major constitutional arrangements. These are that prosecution decisions are made by the Department of Justice (DoJ) without any interference; and that the courts also exercise judicial powers independently. Lam said both were stipulated in the Basic Law — the city’s constitutional document.

She was discussing the two cases in which the DoJ requested a review of sentences to the Court of Appeal (CA) on a handful of convicted illegal demonstrators because the authority thought their previous punishments were disproportionate to the actions that led to their convictions.

A total of 16 illegal protestare ers, including three leading student activists in the 79-day “Occupy Central” movement in 2014, were sentenced to as much as 13 months in prison.

Claims that political considerations were involved in prosecuting were “totally unfounded” in the review of the sentences and the rulings handed down by the CA, Lam stressed.

She noted that the rights and freedoms of Hong Kong people are protected by the Basic Law. But the exercise of these rights and freedoms must firstly be law-abiding.

“In these two cases, what we dealing with is not political persecution, or persecution on the basis of expression or views. They are unlawful acts, and even acts that involved violence,” Lam said.

She added that describing the defendants as “political prisoners” was far from the truth.

She warned that groundless accusations toward prosecutors and the judiciary would do great harm to the city’s world-renowned independent judiciary and rule of law.

Hours before Lam’s remarks, the DoJ issued a statement concerning the two cases, reiterating that they “were handled according to the applicable laws, and that there is no question of ‘political prosecutions’ whatsoever”.

Last week, the Court of Appeal sentenced 13 radical protesters who forced their way into the Legislative Council Complex in 2014 to up to 13 months in prison.

In a separate case, the court jailed Joshua Wong Chi-fung, Nathan Law Kwun-chung and Alex Chow Yong-kang for six to eight months for their roles in an unlawful assembly which sparked the illegal “Occupy Central” movement in 2014.

The exercise of these rights and freedoms ... is not without limit.” Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor