45 pro-democracy activists sentenced to prison

Hong Kong justice on Tuesday sentenced 45 pro-democracy activists convicted of “subversion” to prison terms of up to 10 years, following the largest trial organized in Hong Kong for endangering national security.

The United States, Australia and human rights NGOs immediately reacted by condemning these sentences as proof of the erosion of political freedoms in Hong Kong since a firm takeover by Beijing.

Lawyer Benny Tai received a 10-year prison sentence, the longest handed down to date under the 2020 law, enacted a year after massive and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests in the special administrative region (SAR) of China.

All the activists were found guilty of organizing an unofficial primary intended to select opposition candidates for the legislative elections, in the hope of winning a majority in the local assembly, vetoing budgets and potentially forcing to the resignation of the then pro-Beijing leader of Hong Kong, Carrie Lam.

Despite warnings from the authorities, 610,000 people voted in the primary in July 2020, or nearly a seventh of Hong Kong residents of voting age. The authorities eventually abandoned the local assembly election and Beijing established a new political system that strictly controls Hong Kong’s elected officials.

Forty-seven people were initially arrested and then charged in 2021 in this case. Of the latter, 31 had pleaded guilty, 16 were tried in a 118-day trial last year, after which 14 were convicted and two acquitted in May. Judges found the group had risked provoking a “constitutional crisis,” and 45 were found guilty of “conspiring to subvert state power.”

The politicians Au Nok-hin, Andrew Chiu, Ben Chung and the Australian-Hong Kong activist Gordon Ng, designated as “thinking heads” of the organization of the election, were sentenced to sentences of up to 7 years and 3 months of imprisonment.

The second longest sentence was given to young activist Owen Chow, at seven years and nine months, with the court ruling that he had “played a more proactive role in the system than the other defendants”. Leung Kwok-hung, 68, co-founder of the city’s last opposition party, the League of Social Democrats (LSD), received a sentence of six years and nine months. His wife and LSD leader, Chan Po-ying, described the sentence as “in line with (his) expectations”, when interviewed by AFP.

Authorities in China and Hong Kong say the security law helped restore order following 2019 protests and have warned against “interference” from other countries. Western countries and Western NGOs have criticized the trial, seeing it as proof of the growing authoritarianism of the Hong Kong authorities.

The United States “strongly condemned” these prison sentences handed down against activists who had carried out “normal political activity protected by the basic law of Hong Kong”, according to a spokesperson for the consulate.

“Today’s harsh sentences reflect how quickly Hong Kong’s civil liberties and judicial independence have collapsed over the past four years,” said Maya Wang, associate China director at Human Rights Watch. in a press release.

Anna Kwok, executive director of the Hong Kong Democracy Council in Washington, condemned “an attack on the very essence of Hong Kong, which aspires to freedom, democracy and the right to political expression.”