HK affairs not any business of the UK

More than 30 members of parliament in the United Kingdom signed an open letter to their foreign secretary this week, repeating a one-sided claim that the Joint Declaration between China and the UK over the Question of Hong Kong, signed in 1984, gave Britain the “legal responsibility to monitor the rule of law and basic rights in Hong Kong” until 2047. Of course one of those UK politicians is Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong and a member of the House of Lords, since the open letter is basically a copy of remarks he has personally made many times in recent years. As far as Hong Kong’s rule of law is concerned, they are upset because Hong Kong courts found some “pro-democracy activists” guilty of violating the Public Order Ordinance.

Another issue of theirs is the disqualification of several opposition lawmakers-elect because they butchered the Legislative Council oath upon their swearing in, out of sheer contempt for the Basic Law and relevant Hong Kong laws. The British MPs again assumed they knew Hong Kong law better than the city’s courts do and tried to paint the latter as bowing to political pressure, as if what these MPs are doing is not wanton interference in another sovereign country’s domestic affairs without any legal grounds. Hong Kong is a part of China and neither the “one country, two systems” policy nor the Sino-British Joint Declaration gives them the right to dictate how Hong Kong should maintain rule of law.

All the court cases involving those “activists” are well-documented for public knowledge but we have seen no evidence so far that any of the British MPs who lent their names to the open letter ever consulted any UK court as to whether Hong Kong courts in question indeed wrongly convicted any “activist” under political pressure. Still, by labeling those cases as political persecution, they practically declared those “activists” above Hong Kong law, and that the Public Order Ordinance should have been revised to legalize violence in the name of democracy. It seems their definition of rule of law is quite different from Hong Kong’s, or any common law system’s for that matter. People may wonder if the UK courts agree with those MPs over the Hong Kong cases. As for the UK government, it has no right or power to put its nose into Hong Kong affairs without China’s consent.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government as well as the Central People’s Government in Beijing have stated many times that Hong Kong’s rule of law is none of any foreign entity’s business. Those British MPs, or any foreign government for that matter, may not have to be honest or truthful if they don’t want to, but they cannot make Hong Kong do anything just because they say so. For the same reason, Hong Kong courts are not obliged to bow to their pressure. So, they can perhaps save their pompous breath for something worthier, like their own country’s Brexit mess.