The South China Morning Post reports
- Chan Chak-ming will speak at a legal industry conference in Sydney in the sector’s latest effort to counter lingering negative impressions overseas
- He says it’s not the society’s job to ‘tell good stories of Hong Kong’, but body wants to present situation in factual manner and let legal community assess objectively
The head of the city’s Law Society will fly to Australia to meet overseas industry experts and practitioners at a regional conference as part of the professional body’s drive to put the global legal community right on Hong Kong.
Society president Chan Chak-ming said on Tuesday the body would take advantage of the relaxed Covid-related travel restrictions to have more overseas visits to clear up misunderstandings about Hong Kong’s rule of law, especially after the introduction of the national security legislation in 2020.
Chan, who also visited Britain to attend a service in London early last month to mark the opening of the legal year in England and Wales, said: “[Overseas legal communities] have some negative comments and impressions about Hong Kong, after what happened in 2019 and the subsequent introduction of the national security law and the electoral reforms.”
He was referring to the 2019 social unrest and the resultant moves by Beijing to impose the national security law on Hong Kong and lead an overhaul of the city’s election system to ensure “only patriots can govern Hong Kong”.
Critics claimed that the city had been stripped of the rule of law and civil liberties.
Speaking at a media gathering on Tuesday, Chan said the society was unable to go overseas for about three years because of Covid-19 and explain Hong Kong’s situation in person.
The information the overseas communities obtained about the city was mainly from television, news or social media, he said.
“If you are not in Hong Kong, or even if you are in Hong Kong but if you do not keep your eyes wide open, if you only look at some social media [for information], you will have a very different feeling about what is happening in Hong Kong,” Chan said.
