On Thursday, 28 August 2025, closing arguments were presented in Jimmy Lai’s national security trial. The publisher faces charges of colluding with foreign forces and to conspiracy to publish seditious material, and could be sentenced to life imprisonment if convicted. It could take months before a verdict is reached.
While the eyes of the world are focused on Hong Kong and its judiciary, ARTICLE 19 and the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation (CFHK) co-organised a webinar to discuss CFHK’s recent report on a lesser-analysed element of Hong Kong’s deteriorating rule of law: the role of foreign judges.
Michael Caster, Head of ARTICLE 19’s Global China Programme, said:
‘The presence of respected, senior, expert jurists on a bench broken under the weight of pressure from Beijing effectively bends the knee to the CCP’s systematic takeover of Hong Kong.
Hong Kong authorities would have us believe that the presence of foreign jurists contributes to legitimising what we know are spurious claims that China upholds its “one country two systems” obligations, as it seeks to convince the world that Hong Kong is still business as usual, a global financial hub – but business hubs don’t have close to 2,000 political prisoners.’
Jimmy Lai, 77, a UK citizen and the founder of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, has been subjected to myriad judicial harassment since 2020, having spent over 1,700 days in solitary confinement, and denied consular access. During his detention his health has significantly deteriorated. Regarding the other arbitrary charges against Lai, last year the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal upheld his conviction for organising an unauthorised assembly. Sitting on the Court that upheld his conviction was UK judge Lord David Neuberger.
Six foreign judges remain on the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal – three from Australia, two from the United Kingdom, and one from New Zealand – despite calls for them to resign. Indeed, throughout 2024 and earlier this year, six other foreign judges, from Australia, Canada, and the UK, have in fact resigned, following campaigning from CFHK and others.
ARTICLE 19 has also called for these foreign judges to stop lending credibility to a system that neither respects human rights nor upholds the rule of law.
In the past decade, Hong Kong has experienced one of the biggest declines in ARTICLE 19’s Global Expression Report, dropping precipitously into the ’crisis’ category. In 2020, Australia suspended its extradition and mutual legal assistance treaties with Hong Kong in response to rule of law concerns, and in 2022 the Australian government called the situation in Hong Kong a ‘democracy and human rights crisis’. The UK Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office (FCDO) has likewise consistently raised alarm at the deterioration in rule of law and human rights in Hong Kong and its global reach in its six-monthly report on the status of the Sino-British Joint Declaration.
This assault on Hong Kong’s democracy and human rights has in large part been driven by the Beijing-imposed 2020 National Security Law (NSL).
In 2022, the UN Human Rights Committee called on Hong Kong to repeal the NSL and in the meantime to refrain from applying it. This followed on from similar recommendations made by ARTICLE 19 and Hong Kong Watch in a joint submission to the Committee, along with many others at the time. Instead, Hong Kong has supercharged the weaponisation of the law, including with the 2024 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance (Article 23), rubber-stamped by a compliant Legislative Council.
Both the NSL and Article 23 have been used for mass arrest and sentencing, such as of Joshua Wong and Benny Tai, and to lend legal cover to escalating transnational repression through the issuance of 34 international arrest warrants for overseas Hong Kongers, including those residing in the UK and Australia. The Law Council of Australia has issued statements expressing concern over the rule of law in Hong Kong and the targeting of overseas Hong Kongers.
Other controversial judicial rulings to which foreign judges have participated, as highlighted by CFHK, include the decision in January 2024 to overturn the appeal by Tiananmen activist and former vice-chair of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Democratic Movements of China, Chow Hang-tung. Australian judge Anthony Gleeson ruled with the others in overturning Chow’s appeal. In March last year he declined to renew his tenure.
In April this year, Australian judge James Allsop, with the majority in the Court of Final Appeal, sided with the Hong Kong government to reinstate a four-month conviction against former lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting related to an Independent Commission Against Corruption investigation into police misconduct during a July 2019 attack against pro-democracy protesters. Judge Allsop, for his part, remains on the court today.
‘From the ongoing weaponising of the law in Hong Kong and rising transnational repression, such as the international arrest warrants, we are inundated with the appalling exploitation of the legal system, the same legal system propped up by the presence of foreign judges. It is time for them to resign en masse, and to be clear in denouncing this assault on the law in Hong Kong,’ said Michael.
Watch a recording of our webinar Betraying the Law: Why Hong Kong’s foreign judges should resign
Recorded: Thursday, 18 August 2025
Our distinguished panelists included:
Chloe Cheung, Public Affairs and Advocacy Junior Manager, the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation
Keith Oderber, Former Australian lawyer in Hong Kong, former counsel for Joshua Wong (2014)
James Joseph, Founder and Director, the Duty Legacy