August 6-12
China
The Supreme People’s Court and Supreme People’s Procuratorate jointly issued a judicial interpretation on handling criminal cases involving environmental pollution. The new rules provide more severe punishment for pollution in key protected areas, clarify the punishment standards for environmental monitoring personnel who fabricate data, and clarify factors to consider when deciding sentences in criminal pollution cases. The interpretation takes effect on August 15, 2023, China’s first National Ecology Day.
The Cyberspace Administration of China released draft rules to restrict businesses’ use of facial recognition technology in favor of non-biometric personal identification methods. Except for certain administrative situations, which were not explained, the proposed policy requires individual consent and a specific purpose for using facial recognition. The draft is open for public comment through September 7, 2023.
Hong Kong
The Court of Final Appeal heard its first challenge to a sentence handed down in a national security case. Lui Sai-yu, a former Hong Kong Polytechnic University student, pleaded guilty to inciting secession but was denied the customary one-third reduction in jail time after a guilty plea and was given a five-year sentence. His lawyers told a five-judge panel at the Court of Final Appeal that all mitigating factors should be considered in national security cases.
Police arrested 10 people suspected of conspiracy to collude with a charitable fund that offered financial, legal, and psychological help to persons arrested during the 2019 protest movement. The 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund was shut down in 2021 and its trustees were found guilty of failing to register the fund and fined. Police alleged that those arrested this week conspired “to receive donations from various overseas organizations to support people who have fled overseas or organizations which called for sanctions against Hong Kong.”
The Department of Justice appealed a local court’s decision not to ban the 2019 protest song Glory to Hong Kong. The High Court last month rejected the government’s request for a civil injunction against the performance, publication, or distribution of the song with criminal intent, objecting to the government’s attempt to use the civil law to expand the reach of the criminal law. If the government exhausts its appeal options in Hong Kong, Chief Executive John Lee could turn to the National People’s Congress in Beijing, which has the power to interpret Hong Kong’s Basic Law.
Police questioned the parents of Anna Kwok, one of eight self-exiled democrats wanted in Hong Kong for alleged national security offenses. Police said the couple were suspected of assisting wanted persons to continue to “engage in activities that endanger national security.“ Kwok is based in the US and is executive director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council, a non-profit advocacy group. Police have also questioned the relatives of other wanted activists.
A High Court judge reversed a lower court’s order that the Department of Justice compensate a photographer for legal fees after he was acquitted of aiding and abetting disorder during the 2019 protests. Justice Esther Toh Lye-ping implied that she might have been willing to also overturn the acquittal of Marc Gerard Progin, but the government only asked the court to quash the compensation decision.
Japan
The Tokyo District Court ordered a medical school to pay 1.81 million yen ($12,500) to a 32-year-old applicant whom it rejected due to his age. The court said it was illegal for Juntendo University to disadvantage applicants based on their age or the number of times they had taken the entrance exam.
The government is considering granting residency to the children of foreign nationals who grew up in Japan but later face deportation together with their parents. Such children currently are eligible for temporary release from immigration detention. At the end of 2022, there were 4,233 foreign nationals who refused to return to their home counties after receiving a deportation order, including 201 children under 18 who had been born and raised in Japan.
Koreas
South Korea’s Ministry of Justice is considering legislation to punish persons who write online death threats or carry weapons in public places. It complained of a surge in online threats of violence against the public, and said no law currently directly punishes such acts. A series of fatal stabbing attacks in public places has been followed by online posts threatening copycat actions. Police have detained 67 persons in connection with the posts.
South Korea’s Unification Ministry plans to increase monitoring of and raise the penalties for unauthorized interactions between North and South Korean persons. The ministry is scheduled to open a center next week to collect reports on illegal interactions. It plans to announce revisions to the Inter-Korean Exchange and Cooperation Act in September.
Taiwan
The Constitutional Court ruled that the Narcotics Hazard Prevention Act (危害防治條例) is partly unconstitutional and gave the legislature two years to amend the act. The court said that Art. 4, which provides the options of life in prison or execution for persons convicted of manufacturing, transporting, or selling Category 1 narcotics, is too inflexible. It does not allow judges to impose a fixed-term prison sentence if there are mitigating circumstances. Pending amendment, the court said that judges sentencing under this provision should issue a reduced sentence.
The Constitutional Court is set to issue a decision next week on the constitutionality of a Supreme Court procedural rule that requires certain cases that have been remanded and appealed repeatedly to be heard by the original judge. A group of death row inmates asked the Supreme Court itself to change the rule last year, but it declined. The “same judge clause” says that “cases remanded twice and appealed for a third trial” and “serious criminal cases remanded and re-appealed” should be heard by the same judge.