For the sake of mere decency, Paul Harris, new chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association, should tender his resignation from the bar council in no time.
It turns out that Harris resigned from his position as a British city councilor just a few days before he was elected the chairman of the Bar Association, and he is still a member of the Liberal Democrat Group of the United Kingdom. Harris’ failure to report his political affiliation to members of the Bar Association has put his integrity and credibility into question, and has upset many members of the Bar Association who might have had second thoughts about his candidacy for the chairmanship.
That some members of the association have since urged Harris to resign from the job, seeing him as a liability to the association, is understandable. In an apparent attempt to defend the Bar Association, the group issued a statement earlier this month, declaring that the group is not a political organization. But the statement did nothing to restore the group’s reputation as a professional body of impartiality.
Arguably, most members of the group are apolitical and focused only on professional issues. But the bar council has been hijacked by a few who are deep into politics and have taken advantage of its useful platform to promote political agendas.
Underneath a veneer of legal professionalism, the bar council under former chairman Philip Dykes’ leadership has been on a crusade against the SAR government as well as Beijing, emerging as one of the most vocal opponents of almost all major Hong Kong policies. His successor Paul Harris could not wait to wield his newly-acquired clout. He took aim at the National Security Law immediate upon his election.
The bar council has provided Harris with another versatile platform to carry on his anti-China crusade, aside from the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor he founded in 1995 with funding support from National Endowment for Democracy, an organization predominantly funded by the United States Department of State.
Columnist Nury Vittachi wrote on Feb 10 on the website of the Standard: “The NED gave $30,000 (about HK$235,000) in 1995 to help start the Monitor under Harris’s leadership, records show. The funding group openly boasted in 2003 that it was financing Harris’s group to enable the ‘mobilization of activists’ in Hong Kong. Payments to the Monitor soared to more than $170,000 annually in the 2000s as it helped organize marches against Article 23.”
Alexander Rubinstein, an independent journalist, wrote in his article “The US Agenda Ripples Through Major NGOs” that in 2018 alone, the NED granted $90,000 to the Monitor. Between 1995 and 2013, the Monitor received more than $1.9 million in funds from the NED.
In an exclusive interview with VOA in Oct 2014, NED’s vice-president of programs for Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, Louisa Greve, confirmed that the Monitor is one of its “partners” in Hong Kong.
The Monitor has relentlessly criticized Beijing and the SAR government and helped organize numerous street protests, including major marches, in Hong Kong. It is an active member organization of the Civil Human Rights Front, the umbrella organization of opposition parties and groups in Hong Kong, which organized most of the major anti-government protests in Hong Kong over the years.
The veneer of legal professionalism can hardly disguise Harris’ political complexion. Neither can it hide the fact that Harris has been deep into politics. The Bar Association has every reason to get rid of a liability for the sake of its reputation and interests.