A key China-focused government panel says the U.S. should target Hong Kong’s judges with sanctions, emulating the U.S. approach to dealing with the judiciary systems of other authoritarian countries.

“Just as we have sanctioned so-called judges in Venezuela and Iran for their undermining constitutional government and participating in show trials, so too should someone like Amanda Woodcock, who is a judge in name only, be sanctioned for undermining the rule of law and, indeed, the judiciary,” said Representative Chris Smith, referring to the Hong Kong judge presiding over the trials of Beijing’s political opponents in Hong Kong.

During a hearing of the Congressional Executive Commission on China yesterday, Smith and the bipartisan congressional co-chairs of the panel rolled out a new call to target judges who act as an extension of the Chinese Communist Party’s directives. Since 2020, Hong Kong has been governed by a draconian “national security law” imposed by Beijing, which has been used to prosecute the party’s political opponents, such as Jimmy Lai, the pro-democracy media mogul who has been imprisoned since the start of the crackdown.

Smith noted that Woodcock sentenced Lai for getting others to participate in a vigil for the Tiananmen Square massacre, on top of other sentences that he’s serving for “lawfare” and sedition under the party’s national-security law. “There should be consequences for judges like Amanda Woodcock who are complicit in the dismantling of the rule of law in Hong Kong and who bow to the dictates of the Chinese Communist Party,” Smith said.

The CECC found that the Hong Kong government has appointed 29 judges to handle national-security-law-related cases. “Having undermined the integrity of democratic institutions such as the press and civil society, the NSL regime has become a tool for political repression that has far-reaching effects on freedom in Hong Kong and globally,” the report states.

The CECC also noted that the president already has the authority to impose sanctions on Hong Kong judges, through laws passed to counter the party’s crackdown in 2020, and urged the president to come up with a policy to do so.