Hong Kong’s legislature torn over expanding extradition
HONG KONG — Anger over a proposal that would let people suspected of crimes be extradited to mainland China led to pandemonium in Hong Kong’s legislature Saturday, as lawmakers scuffled and at least one was carried out of the chamber on a stretcher.
It was the most vivid display to date of the deep divide in the semiautonomous Chinese city over the legislation. Tens of thousands of people marched on the Legislative Council in April to protest the bill, the largest demonstration in Hong Kong since the pro-democracy Umbrella Movement in 2014.
The bill would let Hong Kong’s government send people suspected of crimes to jurisdictions with which it does not have extradition agreements. The government said it is urgently needed because a Hong Kong man accused of killing his girlfriend in Taiwan in 2018 could otherwise go free.
Both sides of the dispute agree that the man should face trial. But opposition lawmakers, rights groups, lawyers’ associations, foreign governments and prominent voices in Hong Kong’s powerful business community have expressed concern that the extradition bill would subject people in the city to the mainland Chinese legal system, which is opaque and heavily influenced by the governing Communist Party.
Pro-democracy opposition lawmakers have tried to stop the bill, proposing a narrower alternative that would allow extradition only to Taiwan. The opposition, which lost much of its clout after several pro-democracy lawmakers were disqualified in 2016 and 2017, is waging a procedural fight against the proposal.
The chaos erupted Saturday as two committees tried to meet simultaneously to consider the bill — one led by the opposition and the other by pro-Beijing lawmakers, each claiming that the other was illegitimate. Gary Fan, a member of the opposition camp, was taken out of the legislature on a stretcher after he fell while trying to take a microphone away from another politician. His office said he was conscious and awaiting treatment at a hospital.
The government has said it needs the bill’s broad authorization for extraditions to keep the city from becoming a haven for criminal suspects. But opponents say opening up extraditions to mainland China would further erode the unique legal status of Hong Kong, a former British colony that returned to China in 1997 under a framework called “one country, two systems.” That arrangement allows the city its own government and legal and economic systems, as well as far better protection of civil liberties than on the mainland.
Mainland China has long been excluded from Hong Kong’s extradition agreements. On Thursday, the city’s top official, Carrie Lam, denied that it was because of concerns about the quality of its judicial system. Several opposition lawmakers were removed from that meeting for interrupting Lam and calling her a liar.
After business groups raised concerns this year that the bill could put people at risk of being sent to the mainland over financial disputes, the government dropped nine economic crimes from the list of offenses that could lead to extradition.
But that did not mollify all the bill’s critics. The Hong Kong Bar Association asked in April why, if mainland courts could not be trusted to deal with economic crimes, they should be trusted with handling other criminal cases.
This past week, a U.S. congressional commission sharply criticized the extradition proposal, saying it “would diminish Hong Kong’s reputation as a safe place for U.S. and international business operations, and could pose increased risks for U.S. citizens and port calls in the territory.”
The report also said the bill could violate provisions of the U.S.-Hong Kong Policy Act of 1992, which outlines U.S. policy toward the city. Under that legislation, if Hong Kong is deemed to be insufficiently autonomous from China, the U.S. president can suspend agreements with the city on trade, investment, visas and extraditions.