A Hong Kong court on Tuesday sentenced dozens of pro-democracy leaders to prison for violating China’s National Security Law. File Photo By Jerome Favre/EPA-EFE
A Hong Kong court sentenced 45 pro-democracy advocates in a mass trial on Tuesday, marking the largest case yet brought under the city’s draconian National Security Law.
The group of legislators, opposition politicians and activists were sentenced to between 51 and 120 months Tuesday on charges of conspiracy to commit subversion of Hong Kong’s National Security Law, which Beijing imposed on the island the July prior following mass pro-democracy protests that rocked the former British colony. Advertisement
The law has devastated the city’s democratic movement, resulting in leaders jailed or self-exiled in Western nations.
Known as the Hong Kong 47, the dozens of activists were arrested in January 2021 for the crime of holding an election primary in July 2020 to select pro-democracy politicians in an effort to try and secure a majority in the city’s Legislative Council and vetoing power. Advertisement
However, the Legislative Council election was postponed by a year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and then the politicians were arrested in an early morning sweep of the city in January 2021.
Benny Tai Yiu-ting, 60, a former associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, received the longest sentence of 10 years behind bars for being an organizer of the primary.
Along with Yiu-ting, Au Nok-hin, Andrew Chui Ka-yin and Ben Kam-lun Chung were labeled as “principle offenders” in the court document and were sentenced to six years, nine months; seven years; and six years, 1 month, respectively.
Of the 47 defendants in the case, 29 — including the four organizers — pleaded guilty, 14 were convicted in trial and two were acquitted.
The sentencing was widely condemned by Hong Kong watchers and pro-democracy activists, and is seen as a warning against others who may strike for democracy in the city.
Hong Kong residents have seen their freedoms recede since mass protests erupted on the city in 2019 against an extradition law that would permit some defendants to be sent to mainland China to face Communist Party courts.
The protest then evolved into a larger pro-democracy movement that brought Hong Kong to a standstill. Advertisement
Beijing responded by imposing the National Security Law on Hong Kong in July 2020 that criminalized broadly defined terms of secession, sedition, subversion, terrorism and working with foreign agencies to undermine the national security of China in Hong Kong.
Britain-based Hong Kong Watch on Tuesday prior to the sentence being announced described the case as not only the largest but also most significant national security trials since the controversial law was imposed in 2020.
It said the sentences will set a precedent for other cases involving critics of the Hong Kong government “and mark another downward turn in the crackdown on Hong Kong.”
“The sentencing of the Hong Kong 47 is another dark milestone in the regression of Hong Kong’s democracy and society,” Derek Mitchell, senior adviser of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and patron of Hong Kong Watch, said in a statement.
The Washington-based Hong Kong Democracy Council nonprofit said the trial was “weaponized” and the sentencing of the Hong Kong 47 was “an attack on the essence of Hong Kong.”
“As the High Court delivers the sentences for those in the 2020 pro-democracy primary election in Hong Kong, they are also sentencing the future generations of Hong Kongers who aspire to a political future,” Anna Kwok, HKDC’s executive director, said in a statement. Advertisement
“While the 45 bear the brunt of the sentence, the court has decided what they want to do to Hong Kong’s future.”
