Beverley McLachlin, chief justice of Canada’s Supreme Court from 2000-17, is set to retire from her post as a non-permanent foreign judge on Hong Kong’s top court.
McLachlin said in a statement that she would step down from the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal at the end of her term in July. She continues to have “confidence in the members of the court [and] their independence.”
McLachlin defends court as fellow judges resign
Since the 2020 imposition of Hong Kong’s national security law, critics have called on McLachlin to resign from the court, arguing that it lends legitimacy to Hong Kong’s government. McLachlin said in a 2022 interview that the court is “completely independent of the regime in Hong Kong,” and “functioning in the way I am used in Canada to courts functioning.”
Last week, two ‘overseas judges’ from the U.K. resigned from Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal. One of the judges wrote in a subsequent Financial Times op-ed that: “Hong Kong, once a vibrant and politically diverse community, is slowly becoming a totalitarian state.”
Hong Kong’s chief executive said in response that the government has never interfered, and will never interfere, with the court.
Anniversaries pass with little fanfare
June 9 was the five-year anniversary of one of the largest protests in Hong Kong history. On that day in 2019, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators filled the streets to protest a proposed bill that would have allowed Hong Kong authorities to extradite criminal suspects to mainland China.
In June 2020, in response to continuing protests, Beijing imposed a national security law on the city, which, according to Global Affairs Canada, “led to the violation of human rights and the suppression of open debate in Hong Kong.”
Another anniversary crept by this month: June 4 was the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Few, if any, public commemorations were held in Hong Kong. Once home to large remembrance gatherings as recently as 2020, Hong Kong authorities have smothered such events, including by dispatching police to intimidate protesters.
