“Influential Hong Kong business body calls for extra safeguards in government’s controversial extradition bill”, 27 May 2019

Three extra layers of safeguards should be introduced to Hong Kong’s contentious extradition bill as those in place do not go far enough, one of the city’s most influential business groups told the security chief..

The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce made its stance clear after a closed-door meeting with Secretary for Security John Lee Ka-chiu over the proposed legislative amendments, which would allow criminal suspects to be sent back to mainland China.

The bill… has faced immense opposition from pan-democrats, businesspeople and foreign countries.

“Members remain concerned about the process and whether safeguards are adequate,” chamber chairman Aron Harilela said. “We also see persistent concerns expressed by the general community and the legal profession.”…

Harilela said the chamber had urged Lee to raise the threshold by allowing extraditions only for offences punishable by jail terms of at least seven years rather than three years as proposed, and to make it clear that rendition requests from the mainland would only be accepted if they came from the central government.

Hong Kong’s executive authority and the court should also be required to take into account human rights and humanitarian factors before giving the green light to fugitive transfer requests from jurisdictions the city does not have an agreement with, he said…

 “These safeguards are all the more important when the proposed regime is to be applied to all 170 jurisdictions where Hong Kong does not currently have a long-term agreement, many of which have a lower level of human rights protection compared to Hong Kong,” chamber CEO Shirley Yuen said.

Following a meeting with the chamber and other business groups in March, the government watered down the proposed legislation by exempting nine economic crimes out of the 46 extraditable offences and allowing extraditions only for offences punishable by three years’ imprisonment instead of one year as originally proposed…