Former Hong Kong officials Chris Patten and Anson Chan contradict Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s claim that mainland China was not deliberately excluded as a destination for fugitive transfers

Two key players during the end of colonial rule in Hong Kong have said the British government deliberately excluded mainland China from local extradition laws, contradicting a statement by the city’s current leader as she tries to legalise fugitive transfers to the mainland two decades later.

However, a Security Bureau spokesman maintained that Britain did indicate during the run-up to the return of Hong Kong to the mainland in 1997 that new fugitive laws between the city and the mainland would be needed.

On Saturday, though, Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong, told the Post that Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor’s stance was “self-evidently untrue and absurd”.

Lam’s administration is facing strong opposition to planned legal amendments which would allow handovers to places the city lacks an extradition deal with, including the mainland, Macau and Taiwan. Tens of thousands have taken to the streets decrying the law – which they say could lead to politically motivated prosecutions of Hongkongers on the mainland – and scuffles have broken out as the legislature discussed it over the past week.

On Thursday, defending the changes at the Legislative Council, Lam said the mainland was never intentionally excluded from Hong Kong’s extradition laws ahead of the return to Chinese rule in July 1997.

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But Patten said that “of course the Hong Kong and UK governments intended to exclude China” when they drafted the extradition law, which the Legislative Council passed in March of that year.

“It would hardly have been very diplomatic to make a song and dance about it. But both Hong Kong and China knew very well that there had to be a firewall between our different legal systems,” he said.

“To pretend that this was a ‘loophole’ is self-evidently untrue and absurd.”

He was responding to Lam’s rejection on Thursday of claims that the mainland was deliberately excluded as a destination for fugitive transfers as the laws were overhauled because of concerns over the different legal systems.

Lam told lawmakers: “It was not what was said, that there were fears over the mainland’s legal system after the handover, or that China had agreed to it. This is all trash talk.”

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Instead, she said, the lack of a specific process for transfers north of the border was because the laws were localised from British legislation, which did not include mainland China as a destination.

A Security Bureau spokesman responded on Sunday that the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance was passed by the Legislative Council in March 1997, before the handover. It therefore did not provide for the extradition of criminals by Hong Kong to the mainland.

In the run-up to the handover, the bureau said, the colonial government had already said that it would be likely that new fugitive laws, aside from the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, governing transfers between Hong Kong and the mainland would be introduced. In a 1997 meeting in the legislature, the government made clear that officials from Hong Kong and the mainland were discussing this issue.

Thus, the bureau said, it showed that the limitations of the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance were not the result of concerns over the mainland’s system.

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