A high-profile British judge who resigned from Hong Kong’s highest court last week has warned the city is “slowly becoming a totalitarian state” and judges are being compromised by an “impossible political environment created by China”.
Lord Sumption’s comments on Monday came as a third senior foreign judge in the past week resigned from the Court of Final Appeal.
“The problem in Hong Kong has been building up over the last four years and I think all the judges on the court feel concerned about this,” Lord Sumption told the BBC’s Today programme.
“I have reached the point eventually where I don’t think that my continuing presence on the court is serving any useful purpose.”
On Monday he wrote in a newspaper op-ed that the city’s rule of law has been “profoundly compromised”.
From the land of DUH… Everyone knew Hong Kong was dead the moment the chinese took it over. It was just how long the death was going to take…
Yeah, did he really think that the judiciary would stay independent after the Chinese decided they’d be the ones vetting which candidates could run for office?