(Hong Kong) Hong Kong justice declared 14 pro-democracy activists “guilty” of subversion Thursday during the largest trial against supporters of democracy in the financial center since Beijing introduced a national security law there.
This is the biggest case to date linked to this law promulgated in mid-2020 which crushed all dissent in Hong Kong after major pro-democracy demonstrations, sometimes violent, in 2019 in this southern Chinese territory.
Authorities charged 47 leading opposition figures from across the political spectrum with “conspiracy to subvert,” saying their political activities were aimed at bringing down the government.
Justice ruled on Thursday in the case of the sixteen accused who, among the 47, had pleaded not guilty.
High Court Justice Andrew Chan on Thursday declined to name 14 defendants convicted of subversion, including former “Long Hair” MPs Leung Kwok-hung and Ray Chan as well as former journalist Gwyneth Ho. , the court found two former district councilors not guilty.
Sentencing is expected later this year.
The convicted activists planned to undermine the government’s authority and “in our view, this would have resulted in a constitutional crisis for Hong Kong,” wrote three hand-picked High Court judges.
Most of the accused have been behind bars since 2021.
All were charged in 2021 with “conspiracy to commit acts of subversion”, offenses punishable by life imprisonment, after having organized, a year earlier, an unofficial primary intended to select opposition candidates in view of the legislative elections.
Their goal was to gain a majority in the city’s partially elected assembly, in order to veto budgets and potentially force Hong Kong’s then-pro-Beijing leader, Carrie Lam, to resign. , according to the prosecution.
The defense argued that the Basic Law, which serves as Hong Kong’s constitution, provided the mechanisms to enable this project, and that it was therefore “a purely political question rather than a legal question.”
Diplomats present
The trial was held without a jury, which constitutes a departure from Hong Kong’s judicial tradition.
The case was closely followed by the international community. Diplomats from the French and Italian consulates and others from the European Union visited the court on Thursday.
The United States and other Western countries have criticized Beijing for reducing the freedoms promised when the former British colony was handed over to China in 1997.
The arrest of the main defendants in January 2021, including Leung Kwok-hung, lawyer Benny Tai and former pro-democracy MP Claudia Mo, led the United States to impose sanctions on six Chinese and Hong Kong officials. Benny Tai and Claudia Mo have decided to plead guilty.
The United States Consul General in Hong Kong, Gregory May, indicated in May that Washington would “closely monitor the expected verdicts and their sentences.”
This week, Hong Kong police announced that they had arrested seven people in two days for posting “messages of a seditious nature” on the social network Facebook.
The arrests are the first in connection with a new national security law that came into force in March and provides prison sentences of up to life for five categories of crimes, including treason, insurrection, espionage, sabotage and external interference.
This text also removed the possibility of a one-third sentence reduction for good behavior for people convicted on grounds of national security, which dealt a blow to the 31 pro-democracy defendants who had chosen to plead guilty with the hope of a possible early release.