Australia-based lawyer-activist Kevin Yam has been barred from practising as a solicitor in Hong Kong, following a ruling by a disciplinary committee that cited his calls for US sanctions.
According to a notice published by the government on Friday, a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal – which reviews solicitors for alleged misconduct – found a complaint against Yam “duly proved.”
Yam’s misconduct was “grave and serious,” the notice read. It ordered that he be struck off the solicitors’ roll, a record of individuals qualified to practise as solicitors in Hong Kong.
A vocal Hong Kong pro-democracy activist, Yam is one of 34 overseas activists who are wanted under the national security law.
He is accused of urging foreign countries to impose sanctions on judges and prosecutors in Hong Kong in May 2023, during a hearing by a “foreign official organisation,” believed to be the US Congress’ Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) – a group of bipartisan US lawmakers that monitors human rights in China.
The same hearings were at the heart of the tribunal’s investigation. According to the notice, Yam called on the US government to sanction judges and prosecutors involved in national security and political court cases, the notice read.
“By doing so, [Yam] engaged in conduct unbefitting of a scholar, thereby compromising his integrity, his own reputation and the reputation of the profession, contrary to common law,” it added.
‘Rule of law defender’
The disciplinary review stemmed from a 2023 complaint that Secretary for Justice Paul Lam made about Yam to The Law Society of Hong Kong, which regulates the city’s solicitors.
Once the society receives a complaint, the case can be referred for further investigation to a disciplinary tribunal, which has the power to order fines, censures, suspensions or – most seriously – it can strike individuals from the solicitors’ roll.
In response to the ruling on Friday, Yam said his comments at the hearing were “in line with [his] decade-long record as a rule of law defender.”
In a social media statement, he wrote that a reasonable lawyer would speak out against the “rapid and fundamental deterioration” of the legal system, as he rejected the ruling’s accusations.
Yam was also ordered to pay the costs associated with investigating the complaint, totalling HK$816,600.
The activist is a co-founder of the Progressive Lawyers Group, a now-defunct pro-democracy group made up of solicitors and barristers concerned with the city’s human rights and judicial independence.
It announced its disbandment in July 2021, making it among the dozens of civil society groups that shut down in the wake of Beijing imposing a national security law in Hong Kong in 2020.
