A Hong Kong court will begin delivering verdicts in the city’s biggest national security trial on Thursday, as authorities use sweeping powers imposed by Beijing to suppress political dissent in the Chinese territory.
THE 47 pro-democracy activists and opposition leaders participating in the trial – including Benny Tai, a former law professor, and Joshua Wong, a protest leader and founder of a student group – face prison sentences, in some cases possibly as long than perpetuity. Their crime: organizing primary elections to improve their chances in municipal elections.
Most of the defendants have spent at least the past three years in custody before and during the 118-day trial. On Thursday, judges chosen by Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leader are expected to begin handing down verdicts against 16 who had pleaded not guilty. Those found guilty will be sentenced at a later date, along with 31 others who pleaded guilty.
The expected convictions and sentences to follow would effectively transform the situation city opposition vanguardcharacteristic of its once vibrant political scene, into a generation of political prisoners.
Some are former lawmakers who joined politics after Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule from the British in 1997. Others are activists and lawmakers who have advocated Hong Kong’s self-determination using tactics more conflictual. Several, like Mr. Wong, who rose to fame as a bespectacled teenage activist, were among the students who led large street protests for voting rights in 2014.
“The message from the authorities is clear: any opposition activism, even moderate, will no longer be tolerated,” said Ho-fung Hung, an expert on Hong Kong politics at Johns Hopkins University.
Most had sought to defend the rights of Hong Kong residents in the face of Beijing’s tightening control over the city. Public concern over shrinking freedoms in Hong Kong sparked massive, sometimes violent, protests in 2019 and early 2020, constituting the biggest challenge to Chinese authority since 1989.
In response, China imposed a national security law on Hong Kong in 2020, giving authorities a powerful tool to arrest critics like the 47 democrats on trial, including Mr. Tai, the law professor who had been one top strategists from the pro-democracy camp and Claudia Mo, a former lawmaker and veteran activist.
Authorities charged them with “conspiracy to commit subversion” for their efforts to organize or participate in unofficial primary elections in 2020, ahead of votes for seats in the Legislative Council.
In the past, pro-democracy activists had held primary elections to select candidates for the city leader election without problems, Professor Hung said.
“The fact that they were arrested and convicted and even put behind bars for so long before the verdict manifests a fundamental change in Hong Kong’s political environment: free elections, even the pretense of free elections, have disappeared said Professor Hung.
The case presented by Hong Kong authorities against the activists is complex and largely based on a scenario that did not occur. Prosecutors say the unofficial primary elections were problematic because the pro-democracy bloc used them to gain a majority in the Legislature. They accuse the activists of plotting to then use that majority to “indiscriminately” veto the government’s budget, ultimately forcing the city’s leader at the time to resign.
This election never took place. But the activists were arrested in 2021 and their case finally went to trial in February last year, after lengthy procedural delays.
Of the 47 defendants, 31 pleaded guilty, including Mr Wong, who since 2020 has served prison sentences in other cases linked to his activism. Four of them: Au Nok-hin, a former legislator; Andrew Chiu and Ben Chung, former district officials; and Mike Lam, a grocery chain owner with political ambitions, testified for the prosecution in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Among the 16 defendants who have pleaded not guilty are Leung Kwok-hung, a veteran activist known as “Long Hair” who pushed for social policies for the elderly and the poor; Lam Cheuk-ting, an anti-corruption investigator turned lawmaker; and Gwyneth Ho, a former journalist.
Since their mass arrests, the city has virtually eliminated opposition voices within its political institutions. Only approved the “patriots» were allowed to run in the city’s legislative elections in 2021. And in March, Hong Kong passed its own national security laws with extraordinary speed, at the request of Beijing.
The new laws, collectively known as the National Security Preservation Ordinance, criminalize broad crimes like “external interference” and “theft of state secrets,” with penalties of up to life imprisonment. On Tuesday, the city arrested six people under the new security law for allegedly posting “seditious materials” online. The arrests come days before the 35th anniversary of China’s bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. One of those arrested was activist Chow Hang Tung, organizer of a group that held vigils in memory of the Tiananmen victims.
Observers say these political cases test the city’s vaunted judicial independence. A trial against Jimmy Lai, media mogul and vocal critic of Beijing, is underway. Weeks ago, a court granted government’s request to ban popular protest songraising concerns about speech.
During the trial of the 47 Democrats, the prosecution and defense debated whether nonviolent acts, such as primary elections, could be considered an act of subversion. The national security law defines a person guilty of subversion as any person who organizes or takes action “by force or threat of force or other unlawful means.”
The defense had argued that it did not commit violence and that it believed the primary elections did not violate the laws and were therefore openly planned. The prosecutor, Jonathan Man, argued that the language should be given a “broad interpretation» to ensure its effectiveness.
The length of the legal proceedings and the long detention cost the defendants dearly. A former lawmaker, Wu Chi-wai, lost both his parents while behind bars. Many defendants are parents of young children.
“Almost all of them are seeing their own lives put on hold. These are some of Hong Kong’s best and brightest, all of whom have had their careers cut short as they spend month after month behind bars,” said Thomas Kellogg ., the executive director of the Georgetown Center for Asian Law. “A really sad story.”
At sentencing, which will likely take place months later, the 47 defendants are expected to be split into tiers, legal experts said. Those considered “primary offenders” could face sentences ranging from 10 years to life imprisonment. “Active participants”, between three and ten years in prison. Others found guilty could be jailed or subject to unspecified “restrictions” of up to three years.
Eva Pils, a law professor at King’s College London, said authorities would likely use the outcome of the trial to set an example for those who crossed Beijing’s lines. But the deterrent effect of the trial would ultimately be detrimental to the government, Professor Pils believes.
“By creating more repression, fear and self-censorship, he is denying himself the opportunity to know what Hong Kongers really think about his decisions,” she said. “I think that’s part of what will make this such an important case in Hong Kong history.”
