A professional association for lawyers in Hong Kong warned that the right to a fair trial could be threatened in the future, given that the city’s chief executive (CE) would be able to pick judges for certain criminal cases under Beijing’s proposed national security law.
“We express concern that such process of designation of judges would give the CE the power to oversee and interfere with the Judiciary,” the Law Society in Hong Kong said in a June 24 statement, adding that this “prejudices judicial independence.”
