What is Judge Remedios going to do?
Judge Susana Maria D’Almada Remedios is one of the judges presiding in the sham trial that will decide the fate of Jimmy Lai, the former publisher of the now-defunct Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily who for many years was an outspoken defender of democracy and freedom.
Mark Tarrant, a former classmate of Remedios, wants to remind her of “what she learned from her teachers, her church, and her family.” Things that would presumably enable her to resist the pressure and expectations of the Chinese Communist Party governing Hong Kong.
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….
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.
Tarrant believes that at the heart of a legal system that aspires to be just and objective “is God.” I do not believe this; but we can agree that such a legal system must be grounded in moral principles and moral choices. He is trying to remind Judge Remedios of why she is doing the work of a judge to begin with and what it means to be a judge who cares about doing her job well.
It would be nice if all you had to do to alter the motivation and intentions of persons planning to do evil was remind them of how to be good. Although the reminder might not be a full explanation, it would point to knowledge that the person could access and act upon if only he or she made the effort to do so.
But Socrates was wrong. Persons who know what virtue is will not necessarily act virtuously. They can turn away from what they know.
