{"id":71362,"date":"2017-03-02T16:52:00","date_gmt":"2017-03-02T16:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1:10081\/?p=71362 "},"modified":"2017-03-02T16:52:00","modified_gmt":"2017-03-02T16:52:00","slug":"71362-revision-v1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/?p=71362","title":{"rendered":"Hong Kong Tries To Unseat Pan-Democratic Lawmakers in Oaths Row"},"content":{"rendered":"

2017-03-01<\/span><\/p>

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Supporters of four Hong Kong pan-democratic lawmakers facing possible disqualification gather at the city’s High Court, March 1, 2017.<\/span><\/p>

Photo courtesy of an RFA listener.<\/span><\/p>

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Hong Kong<\/span>‘s high court on Wednesday began its consideration of an attempt by the city’s government to have four pan-democratic lawmakers stripped of their seats, in an ongoing row over their oaths of allegiance.<\/span><\/p>

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The government has asked the High Court to disqualify former democracy protest leader Nathan Law of the Demosisto party, veteran rights activist and League of Social Democrats member Leung Kwok-hung, Lau Siu-lai from Democracy Groundwork and Edward Yiu, who represents the surveying profession, from their seats in the Legislative Council (LegCo).<\/span><\/p>

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Officials say the four intentionally took their oaths of office “without solemnity and sincerity,” qualities which were required by Beijing’s parliament in a retroactive ruling on the row.<\/span><\/p>

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Instead, the lawmakers had used their swearing-in ceremonies to change the wording to convey their own political messages, government lawyer Johnny Mok told the court.<\/span><\/p>

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The move has sparked fears that a political purge of pro-democratic voices is under way in the former British colony after lawmakers-elect Yau Wai-ching and Sixtus Leung were formally barred from taking up their seats last year.<\/span><\/p>

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The duo, both members of the youth group Youngspiration, lost a court case that argued their oaths of allegiance, taken on Oct. 12, were invalid, both in the High Court and on appeal in the Supreme Court.<\/span><\/p>

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They had vowed allegiance to the “Hong Kong Nation” and carried banners saying “Hong Kong is not China” during their swearing-in ceremonies.<\/span><\/p>

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Oaths must be ‘solemn and sincere’<\/span><\/p>

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They also used a historical slur to refer to China, with Yau inserting swear-words into her oath.<\/span><\/p>

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The standing committee of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC) intervened in the row with a ruling that only “solemn and sincere” oaths would be accepted from public office-holders.<\/span><\/p>

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Democracy Groundwork’s Lau Siu-lai told RFA the court case is entirely politically motivated.<\/span><\/p>

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“The [NPC] interpretation was made after the fact, and to make it take effect retroactively is an unnecessary form of political repression,” Lau said.<\/span><\/p>

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“This is a form of political oppression, even political persecution,” Lau said on Wednesday as the court hearing began. “The legal fees are a huge [financial] burden without legal aid, which we have to pay ourselves, and yet the government can bring this case on the public purse.”<\/span><\/p>

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“If it gets as far as appeal, or even the Court of Final Appeal, the costs will be eyewatering, and very hard for individual LegCo members to meet,” she said.<\/span><\/p>

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The lawmakers’ lawyer, barrister and former Democratic Party chairman Martin Lee, told the court that the four were basing their behavior on what had previously been deemed acceptable by LegCo.<\/span><\/p>

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All eyes on court<\/span><\/p>

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Before Beijing stepped in, there had been no rules about what constituted an acceptable manner of oath-taking, and lawmakers had previously been offered a second chance to take their oaths, Lee argued.<\/span><\/p>

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He said Leung Kwok-hung had been accepted by LegCo after taking his oaths in a similar manner on four previous occasions.<\/span><\/p>

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Leung called on the court to uphold Hong Kong’s legal system.<\/span><\/p>

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“Were the Hong Kong judges able to uphold the common law, then I would be 400 percent confident of success,” he said. “But we will have to see what the High Court judges do now that there has been an interpretation [by the NPC].”<\/span><\/p>

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“Will they be able to uphold our bottom line [and separate legal systems], that is the most important thing. That and the votes cast for us as LegCo members.”<\/span><\/p>

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If the government succeeds in disqualifying all six lawmakers, the pan-democratic camp will retain its power to veto constitutional changes, but would be weakened when voting on any other business.<\/span><\/p>

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Democratic politicians won 29 out of 70 seats in September’s LegCo elections.<\/span><\/p>

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Local media reports said at least four additional lawmakers could face similar judicial reviews in the weeks and months to come.<\/span><\/p>

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In the past, pan-democrats have succeeded in blocking unpopular national security legislation as well as the 2014 proposals for electoral reforms that were slammed as “fake universal suffrage” by the Occupy Central movement.<\/span><\/p>

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For detail please visit here<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<div>The government has asked the High Court to disqualify former democracy protest leader Nathan Law of the Demosisto party, veteran rights activist and League of Social Democrats member Leung Kwok-hung, Lau Siu-lai from Democracy Groundwork and Edward Yiu, who represents the surveying profession, from their seats in the Legislative Council (LegCo).<\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ChinaHumanRights","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/minzhuzhongguo.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}