Hong Kong Upholds China Migrant Ruling

HONG KONG —  The territory’s High Court on Friday ruled against more than 5,300 mainland Chinese migrants claiming residency rights in a case testing judicial independence under Beijing’s rule.

In a written statement, Justice Frank Stock reaffirmed Beijing’s power to interpret Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, known as the Basic Law, even after Hong Kong courts have made decisions.

“There can be no escape from the fact that the interpretation was lawful,” he said.

The 5,308 migrants were fighting deportation orders to mainland China, arguing that they qualified for residency under a January 1999 ruling by Hong Kong’s highest court.

Beijing lawmakers told the Court of Final Appeal in June 1999 that it had ruled wrongly and insisted on a new interpretation of the law. The court went along with Beijing’s wishes in a subsequent case.

But lawyers for thousands of mainland Chinese who were in Hong Kong at the time of the original ruling said they should be allowed to stay.

They argued that the government could not throw out people who arrived here before the mainland lawmakers’ ruling, because Beijing did not have the authority to revoke decisions reached in Hong Kong courts.

However, Stock, of the Court of First Instance, said the Beijing lawmakers had not given a new ruling or rewritten the law but “declared the law as it had always been.”

The saga over mainlanders’ argument for residency rights based on their parentage has evolved into a battle over how much autonomy the local judiciary can retain after Hong Kong’s 1997 return to Chinese rule.