Since yesterday, we know that #HongKong will no longer be like we know and love it. The Chinese National People's Congress will start a legislative process of a national security law. This is politically and societally dramatic. But it is also legally questionable:
Legal: Art. 23 of Hong Kong's miniconstitution, the Basic Law (BL), obliges Hong Kong's legislature, the LegCo, to enact a national security law. It made one attempt in 2003, but failed due to massive protests in which also local pro-Beijing elites participated.
Now, Beijing will enact the respective law itself. Mainland Chinese laws are not valid in Hong Kong. The only exception are laws that are listed in Annex III of HK's Basic Law. This is what Beijing wants to utilize now. Fearing this move, I discussed it already years ago.
In private conversations, pro-Beijing lawyers in HK and legal advisers to Beijing authorities always held the view that it was illegal to do because Art. 18 BL allows this only for laws that lie outside of Hong Kong's autonomy.
Since Art. 23 BL gives sole authority to enact a national security bill to HK's LegCo, they argued, Beijing had no right to use Annex III for that. Now, they do it regardless of their own legal considerations. Yet another example of Beijing's disregard of the rule of law. END
