Grenville Cross says the Human Rights Institute has produced a crude political tirade, instead of issuing an objective legal commentary on Lai's case

The International Bar Association (IBA) was founded in 1947. Its membership now comprises approximately 190 bar associations and law societies. The Hong Kong Bar Association is a long-standing member.

The IBA’s Human Rights Institute (HRI) was established in 1995. As an independent entity within the public and professional interest division, it basks in the IBA’s reflected glory.

The HRI’s director is Baroness (Helena) Kennedy KC, well known for her political stances. She doubles up, for example, as a patron of Hong Kong Watch, the anti-China propaganda outfit established in 2017 by the serial fantasist, Benedict Rogers.

When, moreover, Hong Kong Watch created the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) in 2020, with a mandate to peddle China-hostile narratives in national parliaments, Kennedy  became a co-chair, together with the ideologue Sir Iain Duncan Smith.

Kennedy is perhaps best remembered for her role as  the “external advisor” to the infamous “Uyghur Tribunal” (chaired by her fellow Hong Kong Watch patron, Sir Geoffrey Nice KC), which levelled baseless “genocide” allegations against China in 2021.

She was also a founding member of London’s Doughty Street Chambers, home to the “Jimmy Lai international legal team” (led by Caoilfhionn Gallagher KC), that campaigns globally on behalf of the Apple Daily founder. It also houses the former chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association, Paul Harris SC, who fled from Hong Kong in 2022 within hours of being interviewed by the national security police.

It came, therefore, as no surprise when, on Dec 15, the HRI condemned "in the strongest possible terms” the conviction of Jimmy Lai on national security charges. However, it made no attempt to analyze the evidence upon which the convictions were based - which might have been expected of people who are legally qualified.

In its statement, the HRI complained of Lai having been the victim of “lawfare”, which was revelatory. Although an unusual term, it is beloved of Gallagher and her team whenever they campaign on Lai’s behalf. Its usage, therefore, inevitably begs the question of whether Gallagher had a hand in the statement’s drafting.

Be that as it may, the HRI also claimed, without a shred of evidence, that Lai was the victim of a “dishonestly conducted and politically motivated trial”.  This slur was lifted straight out of Hong Kong Watch’s playbook, and owed nothing to reality.

If there had been any evidence of political interference, Lai's lawyers would have raised it at trial (his high-powered legal team included a Senior Counsel from Hong Kong and a King's Counsel from New Zealand). Such material would have enabled them to seek to have the trial stayed, but in its absence they made no such application.  

Although the chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association, Jose-Antonio Maurellet SC, called for the Lai verdicts to be fairly assessed, pointing out that Hong Kong’s judicial independence and rule of law were “alive and strong”, this was the last thing the HRI wanted to hear, and he was ignored.

Although Lai has yet to be sentenced, the HRI called upon the British government to negotiate his transfer to the United Kingdom “immediately". As its lawyers must have known, no mechanism exists to facilitate any such arrangement (whether in Hong Kong, the UK, or any other common law jurisdiction). The proposal, therefore, was straight out of cloud cuckoo land, and it is extraordinary that people supposedly "learned in the law" could have raised it.

Moreover, as various “world leaders” had called for Lai's release (including those in the United States whose interests he was convicted of advancing at China's expense), the judges should have taken heed. Their verdict in Lai’s case, in defiance of those demands, threatened, so it was said, “the tenets of our international rules-based order". In other words, the judges who tried Lai should have buckled to outside political pressures, ignored the prosecution's evidence, and defied their oaths of office. It was extraordinary that the HRI could advance such a proposition, which would be regarded as abhorrent in any common law jurisdiction.

In Hong Kong, as in other common law places, judges are fair, professional and impartial, and decide their cases on the basis of the evidence, disregarding extrajudicial pressures.

As if this was not bad enough, the HRI declared that Lai's conviction was the "final blow" to Hong Kong’s rule of law (and democracy), which could not be further from the truth. On the contrary, Lai's conviction was an affirmation of the rule of law, and showed that foreign threats would not prevent the judges from administering justice "without fear or favor" (the judicial oath).

It also demonstrated that, whatever may be the position elsewhere, nobody in Hong Kong is above the law. Although Lai has huge riches, powerful friends and political influence in foreign capitals, he was nonetheless held to account in exactly the same way as would any other citizen who broke the law.

In yet another slur in its perfunctory statement, the HRI even regurgitated the myth that Lai's convictions represented "the criminalization of his journalism". As Lai's activities had nothing to do with legitimate journalistic activity, this beggared belief. Indeed, they had everything to do with his efforts to wreck China's economy and destroy its political system by enlisting foreign forces to his cause.

In foreign places he actively sought the imposition of sanctions, blockades and other hostile measures against his home city and his birth country. Any journalist worth his salt would know instinctively that such conduct is wholly beyond the pale - for the HRI to suggest otherwise is delusional.

Although anybody reading the HRI's statement would never know it, Hong Kong residents, under the Hong Kong Basic Law enjoy freedom of the press and of publication (Art. 27).  They would also be unaware that Hong Kong has a vibrant journalistic scene, with an estimated 90 daily newspapers (some digital) and 345 periodicals. International media groups abound (print and broadcasting), including The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, AFP, Bloomberg, BBC, CNN, CNA, NHK,  and are never reluctant to speak their minds.  

Perhaps inevitably, the HRI reminded everybody that Lai is being detained in solitary confinement, but equally predictably it did not disclose that this is at his own request.

Instead, therefore, of issuing an objective legal commentary on Lai's case, the HRI has produced a crude political tirade. It can have no mandate for such conduct, which points to its having "gone rogue". The sooner the IBA steps in and puts its house in order the better it will be for an organization that has traditionally valued accuracy and avoided political grandstanding.

The HRI has become a boil that must be lanced. If that means keeping Kennedy away from anything involving the Hong Kong SAR and China as whole, so be it. It will be a price worth paying to salvage the IBA’s reputation.

The author is a senior counsel and law professor, and was previously the director of public prosecutions of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.