The judge and I were together at King George V School. She should remember what she learned from her teachers, her church, and her family.
by Mark Tarrant
When deciding the national security law and sedition charges against Jimmy Lai, Justice Susana Maria D’Almada Remedios may wish to consider the advice given by Justice Timothy Creedon at her Hong Kong alma mater, King George V School, on Speech Day 1966.
Creedon, speaking about the “exultant freedom” after graduation, said it is a freedom that can be used “for the good for the human race, or you can use it for evil.”
“When you see so much injustice in the world today and consequently so much sorrow remember that is a product of our liberty, the product of our freedom,” he noted.
Justice D’Almada Remedios’ father Leonardo, a solicitor, and other members of Hong Kong’s judiciary including Justice Creedon were at Mass in St. Joseph’s Church in 1957, where Reverend McGovern explained in his sermon that in “atheistic countries” [read China and its allies] there had been a “complete breakdown of law and justice.”
Foretelling what would come to pass 67 years later in Hong Kong, Reverend McGovern continued, “We have seen the pretense of a legal system upheld, in which a confession of guilt is demanded as a necessary prerequisite to the formality of a trial; in which the only norm of the moral right is political agreement with the regime in power.” He added: “You who respect the sanctity of law as an attempt to apply to human events the absolute norms of truth and justice as implanted by God in the conscience of men, have been shocked by such proceedings.”
The three judges presiding over Jimmy Lai’s trial, including D’Almada Remedios, have been hand-picked by the Chinese Communist Party via Hong Kong’s leader John Lee. The three judges are in political agreement with the regime in power, which paraded Jimmy Lai in chains like an animal. Nothing as shocking as this has ever been seen in Hong Kong.
Reverend McGovern speaks through the ages as Hong Kong disintegrates before our very eyes. At the heart of our legal system is God, which the Chinese Communist Party rightly sees as a mortal threat to its existence.
In the dying days of the Second World War, Justice D’Almada Remedios’ grandfather Fernando was shot dead on the streets of neutral Macao. Her mother Norma, aged twelve, was shot in the back attending her father’s funeral. Surviving, she moved to Hong Kong where she still lives.
Hong Kong has in effect become lawless, after the Chinese Communist Party imposed its national security law on the territory. Hongkongers are now watching their backs wondering if they will be next.
