In a sudden turn of events, the Hong Kong Department of Justice (DOJ) deleted a database that documented national security law-related convictions mere five days post-publication, according to local media Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP).
The DOJ had announced in a press release late December that the compilation, “Annotations of the Hong Kong National Security Law and Sedition Offences in the Crimes Ordinance”, was intended to enhance comprehension of the national security law (NSL) and the sedition offence. The Secretary for Justice, Paul Lam, had then proposed that verdicts in NSL cases be openly and transparently disclosed, explaining that the collated legal verdicts could aid understanding of the NSL’s requirements and its interpretation by the courts.
However, the HKFP reported that the NSL cases’ index was removed from the compilation. Interestingly, evidence of the removal was also captured by the Wayback Machine, an initiative by the Internet Archive, on the same day. Consequently, the removal might not significantly affect public access to cases as the original sources, such as the Judiciary website and the Hong Kong Legal Information Institutes, are still functional.
Speculation suggests that this removal is connected to recent shifts in the Chinese judiciary. The local press, Mingpao and Singtao Daily reported a decreasing number of cases available on the China Judgments Online web portal. As a move towards better transparency, the Chinese Supreme People’s Court had begun the portal’s operation in 2013. Mingpao further expressed concerns about potential threats to judicial transparency due to an intranet-only accessible database recently introduced by the Chinese judiciaries. However, a state-operated media outlet, People’s Court Daily, published an article by Professor Wang Liming of Renmin University of China Law School, refuting these speculations and asserting the new database is meant to enhance research efficiency than replace the existing public database.