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14 democracy activists convicted of subversion in Hong Kong


'Hong Kong 47' trial: 14 democracy activists convicted, 2 acquitted

HONG KONG — A Hong Kong The court on Thursday found 14 out of 16 democracy activists guilty of plotting to overthrow the state in The biggest case in China under cleaning national security law imposed by Beijing.

Two defendants, Lau Wai-chung and Lee Yue-shun, were found innocent.

The defendants, who could be sentenced to life in prison, are among 47 politicians, academics and other pro-democracy figures charged with subversion for their participation in a primary election Unofficial. The ruling is being issued by the Hong Kong High Court on Thursday and Friday.

Critics say the trial symbolizes a decline in freedoms in the international financial hub amid a crackdown on dissent following mass anti-government protests last year. 2019.

“This trial is not just a trial for these 47 individuals,” said Eric Yan-ho Lai, a researcher at the Georgetown Asian Law Center. “This is the trial of the democracy movement in Hong Kong.”

Most of the 47 people have been held without bail since being charged in early 2021. Of those, 31 have pleaded guilty in the hope of having their sentences reduced, while the remaining 16 have pleaded not guilty .

The 47 people range in age from 20 to 60 and include prominent names such as legal scholar Benny Tai, former pro-democracy MP Claudia Mo and Joshua Wong, is best known internationally as the leader of pro-democracy protests in 2014. The defendants who pleaded not guilty and were sentenced on Thursday include former lawmakers Leung Kwok-hung and Raymond Chan and journalist-turned-activist Gwyneth Ho. They were tried in February 2023 and have been waiting for the verdict since it ended in December.

Hong Kong has a 100% conviction rate in national security cases, prosecuted under rules that differ from the city’s legal regulations, including a presumption of no bail. Nearly 300 people have been arrested under the national security law, which took effect in the summer of 2020.

The charges stem from an unofficial primary held in July 2020, in which more than 600,000 voters chose pro-democracy candidates for the scheduled legislative election ​in September of that year. Many candidates in the primary election have vowed to repeatedly veto the budget bill proposed by the government to force the Prime Minister to resign. Carrie Lamwho was then the city’s leader and was seen as opposing the democratic demands of the 2019 protesters.

People line up outside the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court in Hong Kong on May 30, 2024 as the court convenes to deliver a verdict in the city’s biggest case against pro-democracy campaigners since then. since China imposed a national security law to suppress dissent.

Peter Park | Afp | beautiful images

Officials at the time warned that the election could violate the national security law that Beijing imposed less than two weeks earlier in response to the 2019 protests, which shocked Hong Kong. Kong for months and sometimes became violent.

Hong Kong and Chinese officials say laws criminalizing secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces are needed to restore stability. But critics say it has prompted a widespread crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong, a former British colony that was promised Western-style freedoms. preserved for 50 years after returning to Chinese rule in 1997.

In January 2021, more than 50 activists were arrested in connection with the unofficial primary, 47 of whom were later charged. Legislative elections, which officials postponed due to the pandemic, took place held in December 2021 after election laws were amended to ensure that only “patriots” could run. During the trial, prosecutors argued that the defendants were trying to paralyze the Hong Kong government by agreeing to indiscriminately veto the government’s budget. They noted that Tai, the main organizer of the primary, had said that pro-democracy lawmakers could use a majority in the legislature as a “constitutional weapon”.

The defendants’ lawyers argued that the tactics their clients planned to use were constitutional and that measures aimed at overthrowing state power could not be “illegal” unless they involved violence physical or criminal conduct.

Those who pleaded guilty, including four who testified for the prosecution, may have hoped for a sentence reduction of up to a third. They will be sentenced later.

The 14 defendants who pleaded not guilty and were sentenced on Thursday will also have the opportunity to seek lighter sentences in later trials.

Some, such as Wong, have been sentenced to prison after being charged in various other cases related to the 2019 protests or banning memorials to victims of the 1989 protests. crackdown on Tiananmen Square.

Even those who did not have to serve other sentences were mostly detained for more than three years, missing out on years of family time amid constant trial delays. One of them, Wu Chi-wai, the former leader of the Democratic Party, has lost both parents since his detention.

Lai, who co-wrote one reported on the national security crackdown published in March, said the Hong Kong 47 trial showed that “the separation of powers or judicial independence is no longer as autonomous as before”. “The national security agenda is now expanding to all areas of the rule of law in Hong Kong,” he said, pointing to the city’s recent banned singing of the 2019 protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong”. “It’s not just about the criminal courts.”

The Hong Kong government said the city continues to have the law in place, citing last year Rule of law index of the World Justice Project, in which Hong Kong ranked 23rd/142 countries and regions, 3 places higher than the US.

In March, Hong Kong’s no-opposition legislature unanimously passed the city’s national security law, known locally as Article 23. The first arrests under that law included six people accused of making seditious social media posts. announced on Tuesday.

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