UK judge criticised for Hong Kong ruling forced to quit media freedom body

Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury, the former Supreme Court president who is under fire for his role in the conviction of Hong Kong journalists and politicians, has been forced to resign as chair of an international media freedom committee.
A statement issued by the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom, a United Nations and UK government-backed body, made clear that Neuberger had come under pressure from senior figures in the organisation.
Baroness Kennedy, the human rights lawyer and life peer who is a member of the panel, said British judges should not be sitting on the Hong Kong court of final appeal, which she said was being “weaponised and used against the pro-democracy movement”.
In response, Neuberger issued a statement saying: “I have concluded that I should go now, because it is undesirable that focus on my position as a non-permanent judge in Hong Kong should take away, or distract, from the critical and impactful work of the High Level Panel.”
The panel was a major international initiative of the Conservative government in 2019, acting with Canada. The two countries were co-chairs of the Media Freedom Coalition, a UN-backed body, and the panel’s members, who also include the internationally known human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, and other members from around the world, provide legal scrutiny.
Neuberger was a natural choice as chair of the panel. However, with other senior judges, he continued to sit on the Hong Kong court, even as the territory introduced harsh national security laws at the insistence of China’s ruling Communist Party, which saw its traditional freedoms, including press freedoms, as a threat.
Since a new tranche of laws was introduced earlier this year, there have been a series of resignations from the court, including by Lord Sumption, another former Supreme Court justice, who said Hong Kong was becoming a “totalitarian state”.
Neuberger rejected calls to quit, and this week was on a panel of judges who upheld the convictions of Jimmy Lai, the newspaper proprietor, Martin Lee Chu-ming, the former head of the Hong Kong Democratic Party and five other leading activists and politicians on charges of participating in an illegal rally in 2019.
Lai and others were jailed as a result of the conviction. Lee was given a suspended sentence. Lai has also been jailed on other charges and is currently on trial for alleged offences under the national security law.
Kennedy, who is also director of the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, which provides the secretariat for the high level panel, said the whole approach involved in the case against Lai, Lee and the others was “excessive”.
She said she accepted that retired judges had a right to take up new roles, and that Neuberger thought that he was trying to “support the Hong Kong judiciary in their efforts to uphold the rule of law” but said that “the line in the sand had been crossed”.
“I do not think UK judges should sit on the court, and nor should UK lawyers participate in prosecuting cases, and I have made that view very clear,” she said.
Campaign groups said it was ironic that Neuberger had chosen to resign his position on the media freedom panel and not from the Hong Kong court itself.
“He ought to have resigned from his position as a non-permanent judge on Hong Kong’s courts, where he has become an instrument for the repression of innocent people like Jimmy Lai,” said Luke de Pulford, director of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China.
The Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation said that Neuberger had chosen repression and “to prop up a CCP-driven legal system instead of remaining a valuable voice in defence of media freedom around the world”.
Another campaigning organisation of which Neuberger is a trustee, Prisoners Abroad, defended his position.
The group monitors the conditions of British prisoners abroad, and Hong Kong pro-democracy groups pointed out that Lai was a British citizen. However, it said it did not take a view on whether prisoners were innocent or guilty, and the Hong Kong case did not affect its view of Neuberger’s role.
“As a UK charity, Prisoners Abroad’s mission is to protect the health, welfare and human rights of British citizens detained abroad,” said Christopher Stacey, its chief executive. “Our trustees are each personally, and collectively, committed to that mission.”
Before resigning, Neuberger had said: “My role as a judge in Hong Kong, like the role of a judge anywhere, is to decide cases that come before me according to the law.
“Although judicial decisions can of course result in people going to or remaining in prison, I do not believe that there is a conflict between my role as a judge and my role as a trustee of Prisoners Abroad.”