[News] Hong Kong's new Chief Justice has vowed to uphold the city's judicial independence.

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Hong Kong (CNN)The ceremonial beginning to Hong Kong's new legal year took place, as everything does these days, over video.

Sat in the city's Court of Final Appeal, wearing a black robe, ruffed white collar and white face mask, Chief Justice Andrew Cheung acknowledged the strangeness of the circumstances as he addressed a small audience of judicial officials and others watching online.

 

"The Covid-19 pandemic has taken a great toll everywhere," Cheung said. "The judiciary and its operations have also been affected, and thanks must be extended to our judiciary staff who have worked so hard in such difficult circumstances to keep the courts functioning."

 

But Cheung, who was sworn in as Hong Kong's new top judge on Monday, will face far more challenges than just the coronavirus. He takes office amid an unprecedented challenge to the city's rule of law and the independence of the judiciary, in the wake of anti-government protests in 2019 and the subsequent national security law imposed on the city by Beijing last year.

That law criminalizes acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, and carries with it a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

 

Such vague parameters have provided authorities with sweeping powers to crack down on government opponents as Beijing continues to tighten its control over the purportedly semi-autonomous city. Hong Kong officials had previously promised that the law would be limited in effect, and only target a small number of fringe activists. However, critics allege that since its introduction, the law has been used to forcefully stamp out the city's formerly vibrant pro-democracy movement.

Last week, 53 opposition activists, many of them former lawmakers, were arrested under the law, accused of subversion for taking part in a primary poll designed to choose candidate for legislative elections last year -- elections that were subsequently postponed due to the pandemic.

 

All but one of those arrested have since been bailed. But their cases, along with the other dozen or so people arrested under the law, will consume much of the courts' focus in the coming year. Close attention will be paid to how the courts apply the sweeping and so far largely untested law, which was directly imposed by Beijing, bypassing Hong Kong's semi-democratic legislature, and contains clauses which may conflict with existing constitutional and treaty protections for speech and assembly.

 

With both the legislature and the administration in lockstep with Beijing, the courts are the one branch of government which retains some degree of autonomy -- but one which may be sorely tested by the blunt instrument of the security law.

 

In his speech, and in a press conference afterward, Cheung avoided discussing the specifics of the law, arguing that to do so was inappropriate, given it will soon be discussed in court. But he came back to one key point again and again.

 

 

"It is my mission to do my utmost to uphold the independence and impartiality of the Hong Kong judiciary," Cheung told reporters. "That is my mission, and I will do my best to fulfill that mission."

Such independence may be sorely tested in the coming year, and if lost could have great costs for Hong Kong's legal system and fundamental freedoms. In a speech following Cheung's, Philip Dykes, head of the city's Bar Association, noted that "without judicial independence, a pearl of great price, we might as well pack up our bags and steal away, for Hong Kong is nothing without it."

 

 

But the conflict between the country and the two systems it contains has grown over time, reaching breaking point in recent years.

 

China's legal system stands in stark contrast to Hong Kong's, being highly politicized and almost completely controlled by the ruling Communist Party. In criminal cases, some 99% of prosecutions end in a guilty verdict, and sentences can often be wildly inconsistent, depending on political circumstances, even when the facts of the case are similar. In civil matters, companies and defendants cannot be confident the courts will protect their rights if they conflict with the wider political or economic goals of the Chinese state.

The prospect of being subject to Chinese justice, through an extradition bill with the mainland, sparked the anti-government unrest that rocked Hong Kong in 2019. Yet while the protests were successful in defeating the proposed legislation, they also prompted the eventual imposition of the national security law last year, creating a number of political crimes and undermining protections contained within Basic Law, Hong Kong's de facto constitution, while also creating the possibility for defendants to be transferred to China for trial in some circumstances.

 

 

Such a broad and sweeping law would pose a challenge for the courts to interpret in the best of times, but the security legislation has been accompanied by a climate of immense pressure on the judiciary to deliver harsh sentences to protesters and other dissidents, similar to how cases are handled in China.

 

Judges seen as overly lenient or sympathetic toward protesters have been attacked in Chinese state media and pro-Beijing newspapers in Hong Kong. Writing in the state-run China Daily late last year, one commentator said that "in theory, judges must not take political sides in a court of law, but in Hong Kong many members of the public now see some judges as 'yellow judges' who practice political favoritism for offenders from the opposition camp."