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No one should attempt to interfere with ongoing legal proceedings in Hong Kong, the city’s justice minister has said in response to US president-elect Donald Trump’s earlier pledge to secure the release of jailed media tycoon Jimmy Lai.
Speaking to the press after a Hong Kong Legal Week 2024 event on Friday, Secretary for Justice Paul Lam faced questions about Trump’s promise last month that he could “100 per cent” get Lai out of jail.
The Hong Kong official was asked if the remarks by the former US leader, who secured a second term in the White House this week after decisively defeating Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party, had amounted to disregarding the city’s rule of law.
Lam was also asked if he was concerned about US sanctions, given that Trump had imposed sanctions on 11 officials or former officials from Hong Kong and mainland China during his first term following the passage of the Beijing-imposed national security law.
“You mentioned some other people had made some statements, perhaps even threatening words about me. I have also said this many times – these words would not [make me] waver in the duties I believe I have to fulfil for Hong Kong,” Lam said in Cantonese.
Lai has been detained since December 2021 awaiting trial under the national security law. The Apple Daily founder was later sentenced to five years and nine months in a separate fraud case involving a lease violation of the defunct newspaper’s headquarters.
The landmark trial of Lai began last December, with the court setting aside 80 days for proceedings. He stands accused of taking part in a “conspiracy to collude with foreign forces” under the security legislation, and conspiring to publish “seditious” materials under a colonial-era law.
The trial, which had already exceeded 90 days, was adjourned in July after three handpicked judges denied Lai’s bid to have charges against him dropped. The 76-year-old tycoon is set to testify when the trial resumes on November 20.
Last month, Trump spoke about Taiwan and Hong Kong issues on a podcast hosted by US conservative political commentator Hugh Hewitt. The host brought up the jailed Hong Kong media mogul, whom he described as “very important to America’s Catholics and the world’s Catholics.”
Hewitt told Trump that “Xi has him in jail,” referring to Chinese President Xi Jinping, and asked the Republican presidential candidate if he would speak to the Chinese leader about “getting Jimmy Lai out and out of the country” if Trump were elected president.
Trump replied: “100 per cent yes.”
In November 2019, several months into Hong Kong’s citywide protests against the extradition bill, then-US leader Trump signed into law the Human Rights and Democracy Act in support of pro-democracy protesters in the city.
The move sparked anger from Beijing, which said at the time that the bill was “extremely abominable” and harboured “absolutely sinister intentions.”
In July 2020, less than a month after the national security law was passed, Trump announced that he would end Hong Kong’s special trade status and signed into law an act that authorised sanctions over China’s clampdown in Hong Kong. The following month, the US Treasury Department imposed sanctions on then-chief executive Carrie Lam and 10 other officials or former officials from Hong Kong and mainland China.
Paul Lam, who became the city’s justice chief in July 2022 under Chief Executive John Lee’s administration, has not been placed under sanctions But in July, a bi-partisan group of US lawmakers urged sanctions on 27 more Hong Kong officials, including Lam, police commissioners, and prosecutors and judges handling national security cases.
The US legislators expressed concerns over the passage of the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance in March, known locally as Article 23, and the conviction of 45 pro-democracy figures involved in the city’s largest national security case to date.
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