Samuel Phillip Bickette, an American lawyer who was accused of “assaulting a police officer” during the anti-extradition law amendment bill movement in Hong Kong in 2019 and sentenced to four and a half months in prison, testified at the hearing on Hong Kong of Congressional-Executive Committee on China (CECC) on July 12. He explained the deterioration of Hong Kong’s judicial system in general and, through his case, urged the U.S government to sanction mid-level police officials and prosecutors in Hong Kong.
“The Dismantling of Hong Kong’s Civil Society” was the topic of the hearing. Bickette said that Hong Kong’s judicial system has been corrupted by Beijing’s authoritarianism and no longer operates independently. He said, “high profile political defendants wrongly charged in common law courts with crimes like unlawful assembly, riot, and incitement face almost as little hope as national security law defendants. He pointed out that when people focus on the discussion of the “Hong Kong National Security Law,” relatively little is said about the collapse of common law in Hong Kong, and most of the protesters are accused of crimes in the scope of common law….