A Hong Kong court has sentenced 45 pro-democracy activists to jail terms ranging from four to 10 years in the territory’s largest national security trial.
Benny Tai, a legal academic and activist, was sentenced to 10 years in jail on Tuesday over his role as a organiser of pre-election primaries which the court found was an attempt to cause a constitutional crisis. It is the longest sentence handed out so far under the city’s national security law.
Pro-democracy campaigner Joshua Wong was sentenced to four years and eight months. Australian-Hong Kong dual national, Gordon Ng, was sentenced to more than seven years.
The convicted are among 47 people, known as the “Hong Kong 47”, who were charged under the National Security Law (NSL) over their involvement in a primary election held in 2020 ahead of the Hong Kong general election. They had hoped to win a majority in Hong Kong’s legislature and use it to push for pro-democracy aims.
Most have spent more than three years in jail already, but none were released on Tuesday. Those who pleaded not guilty were given harsher sentences.
The case is the largest by number of defendants since the NSL was passed in mid- 2020. The 47 were arrested in early 2021 in a series of dawn raids on homes and offices that shocked the city.
Western governments, human rights organisations and legal groups have criticised the prosecution since its beginning, characterising it as a politically motivated attack on the pro-democracy opposition.
The Hong Kong 47 are some of the most public faces of the Beijing-led crackdown on dissent and political freedom in Hong Kong. They were activists, legislators, campaigners and councillors from the pro-democracy camp of Hong Kong’s previously vibrant political scene.
In 2020 they held a pre-election primary to choose the strongest candidates to take on the Pro-Beijing establishment at the upcoming Hong Kong general election. It had been done before, but this time came just days after the introduction of the NSL, a sweeping piece of legislation imposed by the Chinese government to criminalise acts of dissent, sedition, and foreign collusion.
The group aimed to win a majority in Hong Kong’s parliament, the legislative council or LegCo, and use it to block budgetary bills and force the resignation of the chief executive if she did not agree to the pro-democracy movement’s demands.
Prosecutors said this plan would undermine the Hong Kong government and create a constitutional crisis. The three government-picked judges who sat on the trial agreed.
The judgment said the plan was a violation of Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, and an act of conspiracy to commit subversion under the NSL.
Some of the convicted, like activist Joshua Wong, are already serving time, or have been previously jailed over protest activity.
There is intense public interest in the trial in Hong Kong and the queue for members of the public to get inside the West Kowloon magistrates court started over the weekend and numbered several hundred people by Tuesday. Some who had been in the line for a day or more were accused by bystanders of being paid to queue and take a seat ticket but not go into court – a practice that has come under increasing public scrutiny for political cases.
On Tuesday morning, vanloads of police patrolled and cordoned the crowd into a line that stretched down the block and folded back on itself. Officers were seen searching several people.
Dennis, a former district councillor, lined up at 4am to support the convicted, many of them his friends. Dennis has been able to visit some of his friends in jail over the years.
“I think quite a number of them are quite depressed about their future. So I think I have to come and give a little support. I think most of them won’t be released and quite a number of them have to face quite a long detention.”
Further towards the front of the queue, Jerome Lau, 74, said he had visited many of his jailed friends in Stanley prison.
“Just for me to wake up early on a rainy day, compared to what they’re suffering inside the prison, it’s nothing at all.”
On Wednesday the jailed media tycoon and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai will also testify in his collusion trial, breaking the silence he has kept over five previous trials and almost four years in jail.
The charges against Lai – the founder of the now-shuttered popular Chinese-language tabloid Apple Daily – revolve around the newspaper’s publications, which supported the pro-democracy protests and criticised Beijing’s leadership.
China and Hong Kong say the security law restored order after the 2019 protests and have warned against “interference” from other countries.
With Agence France-Presse