Years in the making, the first-ever trial has been held by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) for a case concerning an extradition to China—and the decision, out just weeks ago, is extraordinary, and can best be likened to an undetected earthquake. Consequences will be felt across all of Europe, not merely the EU.
The ECtHR is the court established by the European Convention on Human Rights. It’s a legally binding treaty for all its 46 member states, which includes all of Europe except Belarus and, since this year, Russia, which was expelled after refusing to follow one of its decisions. It’s the highest court of its kind for the nearly 700 million people in its member states.
So how can one case, one decision, be so influential? It all has to do with the person at the center of it, a Taiwanese citizen named Liu Hongtao.
Safeguard Defenders and I, personally, have been fighting extraditions from Europe to China for years, almost like an ambulance going around Europe to offer expert legal advice and appear in courts to block them. We are happy to be able to say that most of our cases have been successful, including in high courts. However, it’s merely putting out fires; it isn’t addressing the underlying process that makes these requests from China possible.
Despite eight calls by the European Parliament for all EU members who have such treaties to suspend them, there has been no actual movement to do so in these countries, whose political cowardice means no one will act—unless the EU as a whole acts first. Instead, one decision, by the ECtHR, has rendered all extradition requests from China meaningless, as no case can possibly be successful after this precedent-setting decision.
It’s not a full victory, and a greater push to suspend the actual treaties is still needed, but it’s a great blow against the Chinese regime’s attempt to use European nations to undermine their own commitment to the rule of law.
Liu is an alleged scammer and online fraudster who lived in Spain with a large number of Chinese and Taiwanese. The ring was broken up in a joint Spanish–Chinese operation, and Spain rather quickly agreed to extradite the 208 Taiwanese captured to China, largely overlooking a review of their legal commitments before doing so. Liu, however, left Spain and was caught in Poland more than half a year later, in mid-2017. Since then, he has languished in a Warsaw detention center for more than five years awaiting his final decision. He’s not Tibetan, nor a Uyghur, nor does he belong to a persecuted religious group. He’s also not a dissident, human rights defender, or public critic of China or the Chinese Communist Party. He is, allegedly, merely a regular white-collar criminal. These are exactly the kinds of cases in which the Chinese regime has had the most success in seeking extraditions back to the mainland.
It’s because of this that the ECtHR’s decision is likely to make any extraditions, no matter what the person is accused of, impossible. The decision is crystal clear that torture and ill-treatment in China are so predominant that no extradition is possible, as it would violate Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The defense also wanted it deemed impossible due to there being no right to a fair trial (Article 6), but as the court made such a clear decision on Article 3, it chose to not review that allegation. This was a lost opportunity, as a clear decision on Article 6 would have been a final nail in the coffin. But it’s nonetheless a significant victory that will alone make extraditions nearly impossible.
Ongoing cases in Cyprus and Italy are next in line, and this decision will likely play a key role in denying those as well. After that, the next step is, given the futility in ever securing extraditions, to get European countries’ ministries of justice to stop allowing extraditions at all, as such requests, even when the defense can be certain to succeed, can, as in the case of Liu, still lead to severe consequences, as he has now spent more than five years in custody. It shows how fragile the rule of law and basic rights can be even in a place like Europe. In fact, the court also decided that Poland itself had violated his right to not be placed into arbitrary detention, in an additional broadside against Polish authorities.
After a great decision, a great day for the rule of law and human rights in Europe, now it’s up to local media in these countries to pressure their ministries of justice and foreign affairs on this, to ensure prosecutors stop pursuing extraditions, and to create the political will in parliaments to suspend these treaties once and for all.
