Opinion | 12 anti-extradition separatists caught illegal border crossing, now asking for extradition

By Dr. Karl So, Doctorate of Business Administration

"Be careful what you wish for, lest it comes true!"

The origin of this saying is Aesop's Fables which is one of the world's best-known collection of morality tales. One of the 5 wishes, or demands, causing Hong Kong for over one year of social unrest which started with the Extradition Bill. If the bill is approved, it will allow Hong Kong to detain and transfer people wanted in countries, or territories, without formal extradition agreements, including Taiwan and mainland China. The bill is supposed to be applied to more countries and extradition in both directions. Until July 9, 2019, after continuous social unrest in Hong Kong for weeks, HKSAR CEO Carrie Lam announced that "The bill is dead."

The bill is dead, but the demands are not dead. The social unrest continued and has been getting more serious. Patrol bombs, blocking roads, damaging public facilities, targeting Chinese shops, and even discovery of illegal arms and ammunition, etc. All these pictures still burned into Hong Kong Citizens' mind. Thousands are arrested and charged by serious crimes. On August 23, 2020, 12 of these criminals were captured by Shenzhen marine police while they are on the way to Taiwan by speedboat, once again, another crime committed but in other jurisdictions.

This is not a coincidence for 12 criminals surfing on the same boat, there is only one obvious purpose - running away from highly possible jail time in Hong Kong. All the detainees are remanded on bail and required regular police check-in while waiting court time. On the news and social media, you can see there are a lot of questions raised by people. The number one question is how the court allowed to let these criminals get bailed and three of them coming from the same magistrate? Who arranges and who paid for their escape plan? Better question, why these 12? What kind of information they are holding which may lead to the mastermind? These stories and rumors are spreading like wildfire through the city.

Three weeks after the arrest, family members of these 12 detainees held a press conference organized by democrats LegCo members. Unfortunately, there is no way to verify these so-called family members are real or not as they are masked like a group of terrorists. And then, one of the so-called family members claimed that his son was going fishing on the boat and should not be arrested. It is a new level of lame and they were expecting the public will believe in this joke and support them. One of the detainees, charged by making of explosive, was unable to attend to court and a total of HKD 750,000 bail was confiscated.

As there is no extradition treaty between Hong Kong and mainland China, as demanded by them and CEO Carrie Lam had granted, now there is no legal framework to bring them back to Hong Kong. If someone is arrested in mainland China, it will follow mainland China's jurisdiction and procedures. They will be facing serious charges like organizing illegal border crossing and even National Security Law in China. When they finished their sentences, normally they will be expelled from mainland China and return to Hong Kong. Once they step into Hong Kong, they will be arrested by Hong Kong Police as they are officially fugitives. They asked for the withdrawal of the Extradition Bill, but they did not realize what they asked for, until now.

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