Britain Caves on Hong Kong Extradition
The United Kingdom suspended its extradition treaty with Hong Kong in 2020 after authorities imposed a national-security law that outlaws dissent. The Labour government has now proposed resuming some extraditions on a 'case-by-case ad hoc basis,' according to a July 18 letter from the Home Office published on social media last week by conservative MP Alicia Kearns.
Security Minister Dan Jarvis noted in the letter that Hong Kong has also suspended extraditions and asserted 'it is in our national interest to have effective extradition relationships to prevent criminals from evading justice and the UK becoming a haven for fugitives.' He has also claimed Hong Kongers won't be 'extradited for politically motivated purposes.'
But Britain's bountied Hong Kongers aren't reassured. Publisher Jimmy Lai—a British citizen—has been in a Hong Kong prison since 2020 on bogus charges.
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If a rapist comes from a family that can trace its English origins to Anglo-Saxon times, that should make people no more or less angry than if the criminal has only lived here for a matter of weeks and is from some country in Africa or the Middle East. Race should play no part in justice, even mob justice. It would be refreshing, statesmanlike and a genuinely great public service if Mr Farage and those like him used their public platform to call for calm and peaceful protest, and not display so much apparent tacit support for angry, violent reactions in tense demonstrations. His warnings sound too much like self-fulfilling prophecies, as when he declared a few weeks ago: 'I don't think anybody in London understands just how close we are to civil disobedience on a vast scale in this country.' Given what happened last July and early August, the opposite is surely true: ministers and police chiefs are all too well aware of such a possibility. 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