Hong Kong denies rights lawyer for Canadian
U.K.’S Robertson won’t be allowed to act for Tibbo
A Canadian lawyer who acted for whistleblower Edward Snowden says he’s more worried than ever about getting a fair hearing before a disciplinary tribunal in Hong Kong after a local court refused Thursday to let a world-renowned human rights lawyer represent him.
The ruling also underscores the city’s reluctance to permit outside scrutiny of a legal system that’s coming under growing pressure from the Chinese government, Montreal native Rob Tibbo said.
Based in the U.K., lawyer Geoffrey Robertson’s clients have included Salman Rushdie, Julian Assange, Mike Tyson and former Brazil president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Tibbo said he wanted Robertson on the discipline trial because he’s not only widely respected in the rights field, but untainted by being part of Hong Kong’s legal fraternity.
However, the High Court of Hong Kong sided with the city’s Beijing-dominated government and said there was nothing so complex in the Canadian’s case that justified admitting a lawyer from overseas to represent him.
Tibbo faces several disciplinary charges before the Hong Kong Bar Association, partly related to publicizing how some of his refugee clients helped to hide Snowden there in 2013. The Canadian fled the city four years ago, fearing arrest on trumpedup charges as he and the refugees complained of increasing persecution.
Tibbo now lives in Nova Scotia but is still licensed to practise in Hong Kong, while all but one of the seven “Snowden refugees” have been admitted to Canada.
“It shows a clampdown on outside lawyers participating in the system and observing how it is turning against human rights,” he said of the ruling. “At the very time that Hong Kong needs to have its legal system observed by distinguished and independent lawyers, the authorities ... are afraid to allow this scrutiny.”
Tibbo said Thursday’s decision contrasted with one last year that allowed another British lawyer to come to Hong Kong to prosecute democracy activists — to act on the government side, in other words. “He’s treated my case completely differently.”
The lawyer said he plans to appeal. But if he fails to get Robertson to Hong Kong, “I have little confidence I’ll receive a fair hearing.”
If he actually were to be disbarred, Tibbo said, that could imperil Ajith Pushpa Kumara, the last of his refugee clients still stuck in the enclave and awaiting a decision on whether he can immigrate to Canada.
Snowden retained Tibbo in Hong Kong after he arrived there with a trove of highly classified documents detailing secret mass surveillance programs carried out by the U.S. and its allies.
With American authorities in hot pursuit, the lawyer had three groups of his refugee clients hide the former intelligence consultant in essentially the slums of Hong Kong for two weeks, before Snowden emerged and flew to Russia.
Tibbo disclosed the asylum seekers’ role to the National Post in 2016, after learning their part in the saga would be featured in director Oliver Stone’s movie about Snowden.
The bar association complaints include two unusual ones from groups of anonymous barristers complaining that his disclosure of the episode put his clients in danger, making it impossible for them to find a safe haven in a third country. In fact, almost all have done so.
Tibbo says the whole process has been tainted by lack of disclosure of evidence to be used against him at the Barristers Discipline Tribunal and potential conflicts of interest involving those unnamed lawyers.
The Bar Association did not oppose Robertson’s involvement but the Hong Kong Secretary of Justice did.
Justice Aarif Barma accepted most of the department’s arguments, saying the legal issues to be discussed were not unusually complex, and suggesting that Tibbo could have found an appropriate senior lawyer in Hong Kong. The fact that none would represent him for free — as Robertson has offered to do — should not have affected his search in the city, Barma said.