November 6-November 12
China
China’s National Supervisory Commission is investigating Fan Yifei (范一飞), a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China, for “suspected serious violations of laws and discipline.” Fan is the first senior level official to be investigated since the conclusion of the recent Communist Party congress, at which party General Secretary Xi Jinping secured a third five-year term.
The Supreme People’s Court released the Opinions on Regulating the Operation of the Collegial Panel System (关于规范合议庭运行机制的意见). The Opinions’ eleven articles provide that collegial panels should independently deliberate in a confidential manner. However, they are required to report to the court leadership when handling four broad categories of cases, including cases that are “important, difficult, complex, or sensitive,” or involve large numbers of disputants. The Opinions include rules for collegial panels to deliberate virtually. (in Chinese)
The Supreme People’s Procuratorate released twelve typical cases involving wetlands protection, on the same day that the 14th Meeting of the Conference of the Contracting Parties to the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands met virtually in Wuhan and Geneva, and five months after China’s Wetland Protection Law (湿地保护法) went into effect. Since 2017, prosecutors across China have filed over 670,000 public interest lawsuits, including to protect the environment. (in Chinese)
The Supreme People’s Court, Supreme People’s Procuratorate, and Ministry of Education jointly issued the Opinions on Implementing the System for Prohibiting Employment (关于落实从业禁止制度的意见), which bars persons convicted of sexual assault, abuse, human trafficking, and violent infliction of injury from working in close contact with minors. (in Chinese)
Hong Kong
A three-judge panel of the High Court rejected the government’s appeal and ruled that there was a “clear case” for allowing UK barrister Timothy Owen to represent media tycoon Jimmy Lai in his upcoming trial on charges of violating the National Security Law. The panel said the case would attract “substantial publicity locally and abroad” and that “public perception of fairness in the trial is of vital importance to the administration of justice.” UK lawyers require permission to be allowed to represent clients in the city’s courts. The trial is scheduled to begin on December 1.
The High Court rejected an appeal by former RTHK producer Bao Choy, who was convicted last year of two counts of making false statements to obtain vehicle records for a documentary, and fined HK$6,000. NGOs and journalists have expressed concern about declining press freedoms.
Kwok Cheuk-kin, a frequent litigant who is known as Hong Kong’s “king of judicial review,” filed a lawsuit with the High Court challenging the city’s Covid-19 Vaccine Pass scheme and use of the LeaveHomeSafe contact tracing app, which is mandatory to enter public facilities. Kwok said that after two years Hong Kong no longer faces a public health emergency. Kwok recently won a court battle to stop the government from annulling more than 20,000 Covid-19 vaccination exemption certificates, but the government subsequently amended the law to allow to it proceed.
Japan
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced plans to submit a bill that would ban religious corporations from making egregious demands for donations, make it possible to rescind donations, and compensate victims. Violators would be subject to administrative and possibly criminal penalties. The Unification Church has received attention for high-pressure collection activities, especially after the accused assassin of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said his mother gave the church the family’s savings.
The Tokyo High Court ordered Toshiko Hasumi, a manga artist, to pay 1.1 million yen (about $6,840) in damages to journalist Shiori Ito for defaming her in a series of Twitter posts. The court said the posts suggested that Ito's claim of having been raped by a former Tokyo Broadcasting System Television reporter was false. A lower court had also ruled for Ito but set damages somewhat lower at 880,000 yen ($6,232).
The Nagasaki District Court ordered Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. to pay a total of about 122 million yen ($840,000) in compensation to twenty plaintiffs who claimed that they or family members developed a lung disease by breathing in dust particles while working at the company's shipyard. The lawsuit is the third class action involving victims of lung disease at Nagasaki Shipyard & Machinery Works.
Koreas
A Seoul court ruled that the National Human Rights Commission of Korea was wrong to drop a petition filed by the Lawyers for Human Rights and Unification of Korea on behalf of two North Korean fishermen who were forcibly repatriated three years ago. The lawyers group asked the human rights agency to investigate possible violations in the deportation process. The South Korean government alleged that the fishermen had murdered 16 crew mates. The lawyers group said they should have been given access to a lawyer and a trial.
Labor experts said that Twitter’s firing by email of about a quarter of the 30 employees in Twitter Korea could be deemed unfair and illegal under South Korean law. Experts said that potential issues included the failure to talk to a representative of the workers and the process for selecting who would be laid off.
A group of South Korean lawmakers want to revise the Act on Special Cases Concerning the Punishment of Crimes of Domestic Violence to include stalking by family members as a kind of domestic violence. Separately, the Incheon District Court acquitted a man of charges of stalking his former girlfriend because she did not answer his repeated phone calls or texts. The court said that even though he violated a court order, the man could not be convicted because his efforts to contact the victim failed. The Ministry of Justice is under pressure to amend the year-old Anti-Stalking Law for being too weak.
South Korea’s Cabinet approved revisions to the Family Litigation Act that would allow abused minors to file lawsuits to terminate their parents’ custody rights. The revisions also lower the bar for detaining parents who fail to make child support payments and require courts to hear the views of children in custody cases, no matter how young. The current act was enacted in 1990 and is widely seen as out of date.
Taiwan
Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) said government agencies plan to bolster cross-departmental efforts to target cryptocurrency crimes, in response to legislators’ criticisms that prosecutors and police have been reluctant to deal with crimes related to cryptocurrencies.
Police have arrested 21 persons in connection with the alleged kidnapping, torture, and extortion of more than 60 people and deaths of three in northern Taiwan. Police say the criminal group lured victims with the promise of interviews for high-paying jobs, then held them against their will for periods ranging from a few days to more than a month. They allegedly tortured the victims to get their bank passbooks, account passwords, and IDs to commit fraud and launder money. Police freed 58 captives in a series of raids.