Quotes from Hong Kong judges and magistrates designated to hear national security cases, compiled from their own written judgments or from other public sources.

A few highlights:

1. Kwok Wai Kin in the “Sheep Village” Reasons for Sentence (HKSAR v Lai Man Ling, DCCC 854/2021): Furthermore, when you said that you did not want the authorities to “brainwash the children”, then why is it that you had the right to brainwash them? According to the evidence, one of you had said that children were like white sheet, and you people had to act first. Of course, you may argue that education is a kind of brainwashing anyway, but if that is your justification, as a teacher, why didn’t you put all the fundamental facts before the children but hid from them? In Europe, no one can in the exercise of his freedom of speech deny the existence of Holocaust, then why is it that you would have the right, in HKSAR, to deny that PRC has undisputable sovereignty over HKSAR which is an alienable part of the PRC, and instill this kind of ideas into the mind of children who should be taught to love his country and his homeland?
2. Peter Law in HKSAR v Lee Lung Yin, WKCC 313/2023, where three booksellers were prosecuted for sedition for photo books archiving the 2019 protests: Although the “chaos and violence of 2019 had subsided”, some people “were not calm, and were even resentful, and their emotions could be easily triggered”. “Selling such books to these people would be like reigniting an ember or setting a ticking time bomb in place. There would be a significant effect on society.”
3. Stanley Chan in HKSAR v Tam Tak Chi, [2022] HKDC 208, inadvertently demonstrating precisely the opposite of what is “prescribed by law”: “Often, statutory offences cannot be clearly defined, because statutes have to be interpreted in the light of the times, such as changes in the environment, or the age, or the atmosphere in society. Otherwise, statutes would have to be amended frequently. This allows conceptual terms such as ‘enmity’, ‘ill-will’, ‘disaffection’, and ‘hatred’ to be interpreted by the courts in a manner that is sensitive to the context at hand.”
4. Kwok Wai-kin commented in the national security case concerning Student Politicism (DCCC 984/2021), that their public education efforts about the covid-19 pandemic could be related to national security: “Causing others to distrust the government is inciting subversion.”
5. Esther Toh denied bail to union leader Carol Ng (HCCP 193/2021) for a simple reason: “It is also clear to me that the Applicant has an international influence as a result of her trade union work, therefore, it would be very easy for her to connect with her colleagues aboard [sic] to further the hostility against the authorities.”

Per former Canadian Chief Justice McLachlin, about her decision to stay on as a non-permanent judge of Hong Kong’s top court: “The court is completely independent and functioning in the way I am used to in Canada the courts functioning. There’s no governmental influence, and if there were, I wouldn’t be there.”