In 2018, Amber Poon Hiu-wing (潘曉穎) left Hong Kong for a Valentine’s Day holiday in Taipei with and her boyfriend of eight months, Tony Chan Tong-kai (陳同佳). Both were 19 years old. Poon was three months pregnant.
On the night of 16th February Chan strangled her after an argument in which she revealed that the father of her baby was a former boyfriend.
The next morning Chan threw away most of Poon’s belongings and left the hotel with her body in a suitcase. He took the Taipei Metro to a station north of the city and dumped her in mangrove bushes beside a river. He then threw the suitcase away and went to the airport.
Several weeks later Poon’s father flew to Taipei looking for his daughter. When the hotel showed him security camera footage of Mr Chan moving a very heavy suitcase along a corridor, he contacted the Taiwan police and her body was discovered.
Chan was detained in Hong Kong and during cross examination admitted to the murder.
The Hong Kong police could not charge him however, because the crime had been committed outside their jurisdiction.
Instead, they kept Mr Chan in custody and charged him with fraudulently using Ms Poon’s credit card after her death. Following six months in prison he was released under police protection at the end of 2019.
No trial for murder?
Why was he not sent back to Taiwan to face trial for murder?
The answer to this question is complicated. But it explains why the case led to huge demonstrations in Hong Kong, igniting the pro-democracy movement, and to the radical political reforms subsequently imposed by Beijing, the consequences of which still reverberate around the world today.
Since 1997, Hong Kong has been a special administrative region (SAR) within China. This arrangement allowed Hong Kong to retain an elected government and maintain it’s own legal system, both legacies from when Hong Kong was a British colony.
After the discovery of Poon’s body, the Taiwanese police issued an arrest warrant for Chan and requested cooperation from the Hong Kong police. They got no response. So the request was raised to government levels.
The problem was that there was no extradition treaty between Hong Kong and Taiwan. Nor was there one between Hong Kong and mainland China.
In Hong Kong, the absence of an extradition treaty with China was seen as vitally important. Hong Kongers felt that they could say what they liked, and newspapers could publish articles strongly critical of China, safe in the knowledge that they could not be held accountable outside Hong Kong. They could not be extradited to China.
Then came the case of Mr Chan
But for Mr Chan to be extradited from Hong Kong to Taiwan required a treaty, and that wasn’t possible. Because China sees Taiwan as part of its territory, any treaty between Hong Kong and Taipei could be viewed by Beijing as a treaty between Hong Kong and China.
To get around the problem Mr Chan’s offered to fly to Taiwan himself and stand trial. But this was rejected.
Hong Kong’s government then tried to fast-track an extradition law. People came out onto the streets to demonstrate which added fuel to an already well-established pro-democracy movement. An extended period of civil disobedience followed. Then came tear gas and rubber bullets, as well as demands for electoral reform. After several months, the Hong Kong government withdrew the proposed extradition bill.
In response to such a large public rebellion, China then decided to impose sweeping political and legal changes on Hong Kong. It banned many elected pro-democracy representatives from office, told civil servants to sign an oath of allegiance, forced schools to become more patriotic, closed a prominent newspaper and detained hundreds of people.
Since this time, Mr Chan has remained free, Taiwan’s justice system has been frustrated, and Amber Poon’s family is distraught by the lack of action over their daughter’s murder.
Fate dealt two people and the world an odd hand that night in December 2017, when Amber Poon and a former boyfriend slept together, and she became pregnant.
Who would have guessed that their rekindled relationship would bring such enormous consequences for so many millions of people?
Suitcase image: Sun Lingyan