The U.N. nuclear watchdog’s chief arrived Friday in Tehran amid hopes of reviving a 2015 accord between Iran and world powers, with Britain saying a deal was “close.”
The visit by International Atomic Energy Agency head Rafael Grossi, who was set to meet Iranian officials Saturday, is seen as critical to clinching agreement over a return to the nuclear deal and comes in parallel to negotiations in the Austrian capital to salvage the accord.
Grossi “was received on arrival in Tehran by Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran,” the Iranian body said in a statement on its website. He is to meet with its chief Saturday.
“This is a critical time but a positive outcome for everyone is possible,” Grossi wrote on Twitter earlier Friday.
The next few days are widely seen as a crunch point for the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program — the latest round of which started in late November in Vienna.
“We are close. E3 negotiators [are] leaving Vienna briefly to update ministers on [the] state of play,” the head of the British delegation, Stephanie Al-Qaq, said Friday, referring to negotiators from Britain, France and Germany.
She added that they were “ready to return soon.”
Along with counterparts from China, Iran and Russia, they have been taking part in the latest round of talks in the Austrian capital since late November, with the U.S. participating indirectly.
Grossi had vowed earlier this week that the IAEA would “never abandon” its attempts to get Iran to clarify the past presence of nuclear material at several undeclared sites.
Iran has said the closure of the probe is necessary to clinch a deal on the nuclear accord.
Grossi is expected to hold a news conference on his return to Vienna.
Ready to go to Vienna
The EU has been chairing the nuclear deal talks, and the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, said Friday that he hoped “to have results this weekend,” while stressing that there was “still work ongoing.”
The 2015 deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was aimed at guaranteeing that Iran’s nuclear program could not be used to develop a nuclear weapon — something Tehran has always denied wanting to do.
It began unravelling when then-U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from it in 2018 and reimposed sanctions, prompting Iran to start disregarding the limits on its nuclear activity laid down in the agreement.
Earlier Friday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said he was prepared to travel to the Austrian capital if a deal was reached.
“I am ready to go to Vienna when the Western sides accept our remaining red lines,” he said in a phone call with Borrell, quoted in a foreign ministry statement.
While Amir-Abdollahian did not define the “red lines,” Iran has repeatedly demanded the right to verify the removal of sanctions and for guarantees the U.S. will not repeat its withdrawal from the agreement.
On Thursday, U.S. State Department deputy press spokeswoman Jalina Porter said negotiators were “close to a possible deal,” but that “a number of difficult issues” remained unresolved.
However, “if Iran shows seriousness, we can and should reach an understanding of mutual return to full implementation of the JCPOA within days,” she added.
The head of Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, is again threatening to end service to the International Space Station, saying Russia will stop supplying rocket engines to the United States and may curtail cooperation on the station in retaliation for Western sanctions against Russia for the invasion of Ukraine. NASA says operations on the orbiting observatory are normal.
In an interview with Russian state television Thursday, Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin said, considering the situation, “We can’t supply the United States with our world’s best rocket engines. Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what.”
Rogozin said Russia has delivered 122 RD-180 engines to the U.S. since the 1990s, of which 98 have been used to power Atlas launch vehicles. The Washington Post said the engines are also used by United Launch Alliance, the joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing to launch national security missions for the Pentagon.
Russia said it would cut off the supply of the RD-181 engines used in Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket, which is used to fly cargo and supplies to the International Space Station.
Projects with Germans scrapped
Rogozin tweeted Thursday that Russian cosmonauts would not cooperate with Germany on joint experiments on the Russian segment of the ISS. Roscosmos will conduct them independently. He went on to say the “Russian space program will be adjusted against the backdrop of sanctions; the priority will be the creation of satellites in the interests of defense.”
Earlier in the week, in another interview with state television, Rogozin noted Russia is responsible for space station navigation, as well as fuel deliveries to the orbiting lab. He said Roscosmos “will closely monitor the actions of our American partners and, if they continue to be hostile, we will return to the question of the existence of the International Space Station.”
Russia had announced earlier that it was suspending cooperation with Europe on space launches from the Kourou spaceport in French Guiana in response to Western sanctions.
Cooperation in space has traditionally avoided politics, and when asked about the situation Tuesday during a meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said, “Despite the challenges here on Earth, and they are substantial …. NASA continues the working relationship with all our international partners to ensure their safety and the ongoing safe operations of the ISS.”
Some information for this report came from Reuters.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in Brussels, said NATO allies are not seeking conflict with Russia, but they are ready for it if it comes.
Speaking to reporters ahead of Friday’s NATO foreign ministers’ meeting, Blinken added that the alliance “will defend every inch of NATO territory,” if it comes to that.
Stoltenberg condemned Russia’s overnight assault on civilians and Ukraine, particularly the shelling of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, near the Ukrainian city of Enerhodar.
He said the attack “demonstrates the recklessness of this war and the importance of ending it, and the importance of Russia withdrawing all its troops and engaging in good faith in diplomatic efforts.”
Stoltenberg emphasized NATO is a defensive alliance and is not seeking conflict with Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeatedly has called for NATO to establish no-fly zone around Ukraine since the invasion began, but NATO allies have resisted a step that would draw them into a direct war with Russia.
The secretary general noted Friday there should be “no misunderstanding about our commitment to defend and protect all allies.” He said they have increased the presence of NATO forces in eastern Europe “as a defensive presence.”
NATO’s chief added that U.S. and Canadian troops have joined their European allies in the region and are “stepping up with more presence in the eastern part of the Alliance, on land, at sea and in the air.”
The secretary general noted NATO foreign ministers are meeting to coordinate and consult the alliance’s response to Russian invasion of Ukraine and consider its long-term implications.
Some information for this report came from the Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
The chairman of the United States Federal Reserve said Wednesday he will support an interest rate hike of 25 basis points at this month’s meeting of the central bank’s monetary policy-making body.
Jerome Powell made those remarks to the US House of Representatives’ Committee on Financial Services, saying he continues to support tighter credit conditions despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Iran will continue to enrich uranium to 20% purity even after sanctions on it are lifted and a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers is revived, Iranian news agencies quoted the country’s nuclear chief as saying on Friday.
“(Uranium) enrichment … continues with a maximum ceiling of 60%, which led Westerners to rush to negotiations, and it will continue with the lifting of sanctions by both 20% and 5%,” the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, Mohammad Eslami, was quoted by the semi-official news agency Fars as saying.
The 2015 deal restricts the purity to which Iran can enrich uranium to 3.67%, far below the roughly 90% that is weapons-grade or the 20% Iran reached before the deal. Iran is now enriching to various levels, the highest being around 60%.
Eslami did not elaborate or explain how 20% enrichment would be acceptable under the 2015 nuclear deal which Iran has been trying to revive through indirect talks with the United States.
Iranian officials had told Reuters earlier that Iran had agreed to suspend its 20% and 60% enrichment if an agreement is reached in the Vienna talks to salvage the 2015 pact.
Separately, a senior Iranian cleric said earlier that ending Iran’s economic isolation by lifting banking and oil trade sanctions was Tehran’s most important demand in talks with world powers in the Austrian capital Vienna.
Iran on Wednesday urged the West to be “realistic” in the talks, as its top negotiator returned to Tehran for what might be final consultations ahead of a possible accord following months of indirect talks with the United States.
“Our negotiators… do their best to ensure the nation’s interests, and know that the final point is the lifting of all sanctions, especially on banking and trade,” Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami said at Friday prayers in Tehran.
“If these sanctions are not lifted, it is as if there were no talks,” state media quoted him as saying.
The general content of sermons delivered at Friday prayers is set by the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say on Iran’s nuclear policy and all other matters of state.
After 10 months of talks in Vienna, progress has been made toward the restoration of the pact to curb Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, but both Tehran and Washington have cautioned that still there are some significant differences to overcome.
A majority of Iran’s hardline-led parliament demanded in a letter last week that the United States should guarantee that they would not abandon a restored agreement. The assembly has not voted on the letter.
A senior Iranian official has told Reuters that Iran has shown flexibility by agreeing to “inherent guarantees” that the U.S. administration will not quit an agreement, as Washington says it is impossible for President Joe Biden to provide the legal assurances Iran has demanded.
Iran insists on the immediate removal of all sanctions imposed under former U.S. President Donald Trump in a verifiable process, including those imposed under terrorism or human rights measures.
One agent protested that he didn’t join the Border Patrol to look after children in custody. Another asked why a policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for court hearings wasn’t being used more. And one turned his back on the senior officials who had come to listen.
Unsurprisingly for anyone who’s been tracking migration along the United States’ southern border, the recent showdown happened in Yuma, Arizona, where encounters with migrants illegally crossing into the country from Mexico jumped more than 20-fold in December from a year earlier.
Discontent among the ranks is only one of the challenges Chris Magnus faces as the new leader of the United States’ largest law enforcement agency. Magnus, who was sworn in this month as commissioner of the Border Patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, also faces persistent allegations that his agency is mistreating migrants, failing to recruit more women and is at the mercy of a broken asylum system.
Magnus might seem like an unconventional pick. When he was the police chief in Tucson, Arizona, he rejected federal grants to collaborate on border security with the agency he now leads and kept a distance from Border Patrol leaders in a region where thousands of agents are assigned.
In his first interview as commissioner, Magnus acknowledged morale problems and outlined some initial steps meant to fix them. He had no simple answer to address migration flows.
“There have always been periods of migrant surges into this country for different reasons, at different times,” he said last week. “But I don’t think anybody disputes that the numbers are high right now and that we have to work as many different strategies as possible to deal with those high numbers.”
Magnus noted the growing number of migrants who from countries outside of Mexico and Central America, a trend that has been especially strong in Yuma.
Under a public health order known as Title 42 that was designed to limit spread of COVID-19, Mexico takes back migrants from the U.S. who are from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador and are denied a chance to seek asylum. Other nationalities are eligible for expulsion, but the U.S. often won’t fly them home due to the expense or strained diplomatic relations with their home countries. Instead, they are often quickly released in the U.S. to pursue asylum.
FILE – Migrants released by the Border Patrol with notices to appear in court, Feb. 5, 2022, in Somerton, Ariz., wait for COVID-19 testing at a Regional Center for Border Health warehouse.
“There’s a lot of frustration,” said Rafael Rivera, president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 2595, a union that represents agents in the patrol’s Yuma sector, which has seen a huge increase in such migrants. “They feel like there’s no consequences, that we have an open border.”
In December, U.S. officials stopped Venezuelans at the border nearly 25,000 times, which was more than double September’s count and more than a hundred times the roughly 200 they made in December 2020. Venezuelans trailed only Mexicans in the number stopped at the U.S. border in December.
In the Yuma sector, which stretches from California’s Imperial Sand Dunes to western Arizona’s desert and rocky mountain ranges, Venezuelans were stopped nearly 10 times more than Mexicans in December. Colombians, Indians, Cubans and Haitians also outnumbered Mexicans.
Mexico began requiring visas for Venezuelans on Jan. 21, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas noted during his contentious Jan. 26 meeting with Yuma agents, according to a recording leaked to the website Townhall, which publishes conservative viewpoints. He said the U.S. was pressing Mexico to accept more nationalities under Title 42 authority and to increase immigration enforcement within its own borders.
Magnus, who reports to Mayorkas, told the AP that migration flows are “increasingly complex” and that the U.S. was “doing our best to build and take advantage of relationships with these different countries that migrants are coming from.”
Although President Joe Biden faces many of the same challenges as his predecessors, Donald Trump visited the border often, spent massively on enforcement and got an early endorsement from the agents’ union in 2016.
As a Biden appointee and an outsider who had a chilly relationship with Border Patrol leaders in Tucson, Magnus might struggle winning over agents.
FILE – A Border Patrol agent fills out paperwork for migrants who surrendered in Yuma, Ariz., Feb. 5, 2022, after crossing the border illegally from Los Algodones, Mexico.
Roy Villareal, chief of the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector from early 2019 until late 2020, said he sought an introductory meeting with Magnus, who was then Tucson’s police chief, but that he never heard back, calling their lack of interaction “a telling sign.” Villareal could recall speaking to Magnus only three times during their overlapping tenures — each one a courtesy call from Magnus to inform him that Tucson police were about to arrest one of his agents.
“He’s the wrong person for the Border Patrol,” said Villareal, who retired after 32 years in the agency. “His knowledge and understanding of border enforcement just isn’t there. … Agents will challenge him.”
Others consider Magnus a good fit.
“He is very respected among his colleagues,” said Gil Kerlikowske, a former Seattle police chief whose focus on use of force rankled some agents when he held Magnus’ job from 2014 to 2017. “Chris’ background on holding people accountable is pretty extensive.”
Magnus, 61, was born and raised in Lansing, Michigan, where he served stints as an emergency dispatcher, paramedic, sheriff’s deputy and police captain. He was police chief in Fargo, North Dakota, and Richmond, California, before he took the job in Tucson in January 2016. In that latest role, he took orders from elected leaders in the liberal city of more than 500,000 people.
In Tucson, Magnus created a program to steer people away from drugs, worked with nonprofits helping homeless people and overhauled the department’s use-of-force policy. He openly criticized Trump policies for making migrants more reluctant to share information about crimes with police.
CBP critics in Tucson give Magnus mixed reviews. Vicki Gaubeca, of the Southern Border Communities Coalition, said he championed “some very progressive policies,” but that the Border Patrol needs a visionary who will change what she calls a deep-seated “culture of impunity.”
FILE – A Mexican smuggler guides a Haitian family across the Morelos Dam over the Colorado River from Los Algodones, Mexico, on Feb. 4, 2022, to Yuma, Ariz., on the other side.
In his final weeks as police chief, Magnus called for the firing of an off-duty officer who shot and killed a suspected shoplifter in a motorized wheelchair, saying it was “a clear violation of department policy.” The officer left the department last month.
And in 2020, Magnus offered to resign over an in-custody death that the department failed to make public for two months, but the city manager asked him to stay.
One longstanding issue Magnus faces is allegations of agents using excessive force. Agents have been involved in an increasing number of use-of-force incidents and there have been more fatalities involving Border Patrol agents, though the number of encounters surged at an even higher rate.
Magnus said the use of force is a “very serious concern” and that he believes the overwhelming majority of agents act responsibly. He also defended specialized teams that collect evidence in incidents that might involve agents’ excessive use of force. Democratic congressional leaders have expressed serious concerns about the Critical Incident Teams, which some activists allege are shadowy cover-up operations.
“This is really not unusual in most police agencies,” Magnus told the AP. “There’s absolutely no reason why trained investigators in the field can’t be gathering this kind of critical evidence.”
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday he is “determined” that his human rights chief should conduct a “credible” visit to China’s semi-autonomous Xinjiang province, where ethnic Uyghur and Turkic Muslim minorities live.
“It is in the interest of China — if they are convinced that they are not doing what people accuse them to do — it is in the interest of China to have a credible visit of the high commissioner, and we will be doing everything we can to make sure that it happens,” Guterres said. “If it won’t happen, of course the high commissioner will take the decisions that correspond to her mandate.”
The U.N. chief made the remarks in Germany at the Munich Security Conference, in response to a question from the conference chairman, Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet has been trying to negotiate a visit to Xinjiang for the past three years. Chinese officials said recently that she would be allowed to come to have an exchange, but not an investigation. Beijing denies it violates the rights of Uyghurs and says it is combating terrorism.
Rights groups and the U.S. government accuse Beijing of serious abuses of Uyghur rights, including torture, forced sterilization, sexual violence and forced separation of children. They are subjected to widespread surveillance and more than a million Uyghurs have been sent to detention camps.
China has dismissed the accusations as groundless and says Xinjiang enjoys stability, development and prosperity. Beijing has also lashed out at other nations for interfering in its internal affairs.
Guterres visited Beijing earlier this month as a guest of the International Olympic Committee for the opening ceremony of the Winter Games. He also had a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Foreign Minister Wang Yi, during which his spokesman said he told them he expects the government to allow a “credible visit” for Bachelet.
“What I have been telling the Chinese authorities, and I’m telling publicly, is that in Xinjiang human rights must be fully respected, but not only human rights must be fully respected, policies must guarantee that the identity – the cultural and religious identity of minorities is respected — and at the same time they have opportunities to be part of the society as a whole,” the secretary-general said in Munich.
Human Rights Watch welcomed the U.N. chief’s remarks.
“These are Guterres’ strongest remarks on the human rights crisis in Xinjiang to date,” Human Rights Watch U.N. Director Louis Charbonneau told VOA. “Obviously a “credible” visit by the high commissioner has to mean unfettered and unmanaged access in Xinjiang, which the secretary-general clearly recognizes.”
Charbonneau noted that the Chinese government has not yet been willing to grant that.
“The Chinese have said they’ve maintained a clear and consistent position, and there are no signs of change of heart in Beijing,” he said. “But whether or not the high commissioner visits China, she should publish her long-delayed report on Xinjiang immediately. There’s no reason to keep denying member states her office’s assessment of the massive and widespread human rights abuses in Xinjiang, which we at Human Rights Watch have determined amount to crimes against humanity.”
A report on the situation of the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities has been expected from Bachelet’s office for some time, but so far it has not come out.
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has arrived in Brussels for talks with NATO leadership and allied defense ministers, as tens of thousands of Russian troops have surrounded Ukraine from the north, south and east.
During the gathering on Wednesday and Thursday, Austin and his counterparts will discuss how to deter Russia from invading Ukraine while shoring up defenses on the alliance’s eastern flank.
“This really is a decisive moment for NATO, the likes of which we have not really seen potentially since NATO was established in 1949,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “This is where American leadership in NATO matters,” he told VOA.
The “underlying message” from NATO and the United States will be to protect the international rules-based order by calling out “egregious attempts to undermine the rule of law” and “upholding the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states,” according to a senior defense official.
“We cannot allow an adversary to try to redraw borders by force without facing significant consequences,” the official added.
Austin will then travel to NATO members Poland and Lithuania, Russian neighbors that have watched the developments surrounding Ukraine with increasing concern.
While in Poland on Friday, Austin will meet with President Andrzej Duda before visiting U.S. troops. The United States will soon have about 9,000 troops in Poland after President Joe Biden earlier this month ordered nearly 5,000 additional troops to deploy there, citing security concerns due to Russia’s recent moves.
U.S. troops of the 82nd Airborne Division recently deployed to Poland because of the Russia-Ukraine tensions are setting up camp at a military airport in Mielec, southeastern Poland, Feb. 12, 2022.
In Lithuania, Austin will meet with President Gitanas Nauseda and host a meeting with that country’s defense minister along with those from Estonia and Latvia.
President Joe Biden said Tuesday Russia has 150,000 troops surrounding Ukraine, including in Belarus to the north, the illegally annexed Crimea region to the south, and along the Russian border with Ukraine to the east. Russian ships are also exercising nearby in the Black Sea, which prompted a formal protest from Ukraine’s foreign ministry.
“I think of a boa constrictor that is squeezing Ukraine to force the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky to blink, to make some giant concession,” retired Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, who once commanded U.S. Army forces in Europe, told VOA.
Russia’s defense ministry announced Tuesday that some military units would pull back to their bases, a claim that Biden said the U.S. had not yet verified.
Russian tanks of the Western Military District units return to their permanent deployment sites, in an unknown location in Russia, in this still image taken from a handout video released Feb. 15, 2022.
Meanwhile, Russian legislators passed proposals Tuesday calling on President Vladimir Putin to formally recognize the separatist-controlled regions of eastern Ukraine as independent states, in a move that could justify an incursion in an area it no longer recognizes as Ukraine’s territory.
The United States has pushed for a diplomatic solution to the tensions and has said it will not fight Russian forces in Ukraine, which is not a member of NATO.
The U.S. has shipped planeloads of lethal military aid to Ukraine in recent weeks, including Javelin anti-tank weapons and ammunition. A small number of U.S. troops had also trained Ukrainian soldiers through a program that started following Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, but those troops were ordered by Austin to leave Ukraine a few days ago, citing concerns that a potential Russian invasion could come at any moment.
Workers unload a shipment of military aid delivered as part of the United States of America’s security assistance to Ukraine, at the Boryspil airport, outside Kyiv, Ukraine, Jan. 25, 2022.
NATO allies have made multiple attempts to get Putin to pull his troops away from Ukraine’s border and have threatened severe economic sanctions should Russian troops invade.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz arrived in Moscow on Tuesday for talks with Putin. Biden called Putin on Saturday. French President Emanuel Macron spoke face to face with Putin last week.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, on the other hand, expressed his support for Putin during the heightened tensions over Moscow’s forces surrounding Ukraine.
U.S. officials and former officials have warned that an invasion of Ukraine could embolden other adversaries.
“If the United States with all of our allies, all of our partners and the combined diplomatic and economic power, cannot deter the Kremlin from … another attack on Ukraine, then I think the Chinese Communist Party leadership is not going to be terribly impressed by anything that we say about Taiwan or the South China Sea,” Hodges said.
Criticism of Hong Kong’s judicial independence has no “value” according to the special administrative region’s chief justice, but law experts say many questions remain.
Since Beijing imposed a national security law on the region 18 months ago, Hong Kong has endured major changes to its political system and media environment.
Now, attention has turned to whether Hong Kong’s judiciary can remain freestanding as Beijing tightens its grip.
In December, Britain released a six-month report about Hong Kong that outlined the city’s eroding freedoms after the implementation of the security law. The report included the accusation that Hong Kong’s “judicial independence is increasingly finely balanced.” The Hong Kong government rejected the finding.
Concerns remain, though, as to whether Hong Kong will maintain its British-style justice system or eventually replace it with China’s opaque system.
Speaking at the opening of the legal year Monday, Hong Kong’s Chief Justice Andrew Cheung said the territory’s judicial independence is “fact,” RTHK reported.
“Criticisms of court decisions, which are made without first ascertaining the facts in a case or reading and understanding the reasons for the court’s decision, are as meaningless as they are hollow – so is any unsubstantiated doubt over the court’s independence. Judicial independence in Hong Kong exists as a fact. And we are here today to bear witness to this fact.”
But one lawyer formerly of Hong Kong, who chose to remain anonymous, told VOA that Cheung hasn’t taken into account criticism of the judiciary.
“The Chief Justice’s comments at the opening of the legal year are thoroughly underwhelming. (The) dismissal of critics of Hong Kong’s rule of law as being motivated by ‘surmises, political stances or geopolitical considerations’ also smacks of CCP (Chinese Communist Party) propaganda. I would expect a Hong Kong judge to stick to analytical reasoning, and weigh these criticisms for their merits, rather than attack the critics for ulterior motives,” the lawyer said.
The national security law prohibits acts deemed as secession, subversion, foreign collusion and terrorism, with punishments of up to life in prison. Critics of the security law – including pro-democracy opposition and Western governments – have said the legislation threatens Hong Kong’s unique autonomy, promised when Britain handed the territory back to China in 1997.
Out of at least 150 people who have been arrested under the security law, five have been convicted and three have been sentenced to jail.
Those sentenced include former waiter Leon Tong Ying-kit, 24, who received nine years in prison following his conviction for terrorism and secession in July. November saw pro-democracy protester Ma Chun-man sentenced to nearly six years in prison for inciting secession, and pro-independence youth activist Tony Chung sentenced for secession and money laundering.
For Hong Kong’s national security law cases, Chief Executive Carrie Lam has handpicked judges to oversee the proceedings, a move that has angered legal experts.
“What about the existence of the appointment system in the first place? Why should there be national security law judges? How does that serve the rule of law or ensure a fair trial?” asked the lawyer who was formerly in Hong Kong.
Eric Yan-ho Lai, a law analyst and fellow at Georgetown University, also questioned the way judges are selected to preside over national security cases and whether there are any checks on the chief executive’s power to choose them.
Cheung said Monday the impartiality of the courts was not affected because all designated judges are bound under judicial oath to pass justice without fear or favor, self-interest or deceit.
But Yan-ho Lai told VOA, “Andrew Cheung could not explain why the chief executive picking the national security law judges would not affect impartiality, especially when Cheung himself visited the chief executive for a meeting just before the Court of Final Appeal hearing on Jimmy Lai’s bail appeal.”
Media mogul Jimmy Lai is in jail facing a slew of criminal charges and facing the possibility of life in prison. Reports said Lam met with Cheung ahead of a bail hearing for Lai in February. Lam denied discussing court cases with Cheung, reiterating her commitment to judicial independence, the South China Morning Post reported.
Since the security law has been in force, Hong Kong authorities have arrested pro-democracy activists, journalists and former lawmakers with the crackdown paving the way for a political revamp in the city.
Last month, Hong Kong’s mini parliament, the Legislative Council, saw its first-ever “patriots only” elections in which all but one of the seats were won by pro-Beijing candidates.
Beijing restructured the legislature last year by reducing the number of directly elected seats voted on by the public. A vetting committee comprising Beijing loyalists also has been installed to determine whether political candidates are loyal to China. No member of the pro-democracy opposition ran in the elections.
Those arrested under the security law include dozens of pro-democracy political figures who remain in pre-trial detention after being charged under the law in February.
“Although Andrew Cheung shared his beliefs, he could not explain why fair trial can be upheld when dozens of national security law defendants are being remanded in pre-trial detention for almost a year. When Cheung’s words and deeds are not consistent, the public might be less convinced that the integrity of the court in Hong Kong can be upheld in the post-national security law era,” Yan-ho Lai added.
Additionally, Hong Kong’s media have taken a downward turn since pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily closed in June when several of its executives were charged under the security law and authorities froze the company’s financial assets.
And pro-democracy news outlet Stand News closed its doors on Dec. 29 as part of a sedition investigation. Independent news sites Citizen News and Mad Dog Daily also decided to fold, citing uncertainty in the region.
At least 50 civil society groups also have disbanded in Hong Kong since last year.
