HONG KONG — A Hong Kong court on Thursday found 14 of 16 pro-democracy activists guilty of conspiring to subvert the state in the Chinese territory’s biggest case under a sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing.
Two of the defendants, Lau Wai-chung and Lee Yue-shun, were found not guilty.
The defendants, who face up to life in prison, are among 47 politicians, academics and other pro-democracy figures who have been charged with conspiracy to commit subversion due to their involvement in an unofficial primary election. The sentence will be issued by the High Court of Hong Kong over two days, Thursday and Friday.
Critics say the trial symbolizes the decline of freedoms in the international financial hub amid a crackdown on dissent following mass anti-government protests in 2019.
“This trial is not just a trial for these 47 individuals,” said Eric Yan-ho Lai, a research fellow at the Georgetown Asian Law Center. “It’s a test for the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.”
Most of the 47 have been held without bail since they were charged in early 2021. Of these, 31 have pleaded guilty in hopes of a reduced sentence, while the remaining 16 have pleaded not guilty.
The 47 range in age from 20 to 60 and include prominent names such as jurist Benny Tai, former pro-democracy lawmaker Claudia Mo and Joshua Wong, best known internationally as the leader of the 2014 pro-democracy protests. innocent and were convicted on Thursday, including former lawmakers Leung Kwok-hung and Raymond Chan and journalist-turned-activist Gwyneth Ho. They went to trial in February 2023 and have been awaiting a decision since it ended in December.
Hong Kong has had a 100% conviction rate in national security cases, which are prosecuted under rules that diverge from the city’s legal norms, including the presumption of bail. Nearly 300 people were arrested under the national security law, which came into force in the summer of 2020.
The charges stem from informal primary elections held in July 2020, in which more than 600,000 voters selected pro-democracy candidates for a legislative election that was scheduled for September of that year. Many of the candidates in the primary elections vowed to repeatedly veto the government’s proposed budget in an effort to force the resignation of Carrie Lam, who was then the city’s leader and considered resistant to the 2019 protesters’ democratic demands.
Authorities warned at the time that the elections could violate the national security law that Beijing imposed less than two weeks earlier in response to the 2019 protests, which roiled Hong Kong for months and at times turned violent.
Chinese and Hong Kong officials said the law, which criminalizes secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, was necessary to restore stability. But critics say it has led to a widespread crackdown on dissent in Hong Kong, a former British colony that was promised its Western-style freedoms would be preserved for 50 years after its return to Chinese rule in 1997.
In January 2021, more than 50 activists were detained in connection with the unofficial primaries, 47 of whom were subsequently charged. The legislative elections, which authorities postponed citing the pandemic, were held in December 2021 after electoral laws were revised to ensure that only “patriots” could run for public office. During the trial, prosecutors argued that the defendants were trying to paralyze the Hong Kong government. government by agreeing to indiscriminately veto government budgets. They noted that Tai, one of the primary organizers, said pro-democracy lawmakers could use their majority in the legislature as a “constitutional weapon.”
The defendants’ lawyers argued that the maneuver their clients planned to use was constitutional and that the means of subverting state power could not be “illegal” unless they involved physical violence or criminal conduct.
Those who pleaded guilty, including four who testified for the prosecution, could have expected sentence reductions 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 ask for lighter sentences at later hearings.
Some, like Wong, have already been sentenced to prison after being charged in several other cases related to the 2019 protests or banned memorials to victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Even those serving no other sentences have mostly spent more than three years in detention, losing years with their families due to repeated trial delays. One of them, Wu Chi-wai, former leader of the Democratic Party, has lost his parents since he was detained.
Lai, who co-wrote a report on national security crackdown published in March, said the Hong Kong 47 trial shows that “the separation of powers or judicial independence is no longer as autonomous as it once was.” “The national security agenda is expanding to all areas of the rule of law in Hong Kong now,” he said, pointing to the city’s recent ban on the 2019 protest anthem “Glory to Hong Kong.” “It’s not just about the criminal courts.”
The Hong Kong government maintains that the city continues to have the rule of law, citing last year Rule of Law Index by the World Justice Project, in which Hong Kong ranked 23rd out of 142 countries and regions, three positions above the United States.
In March, Hong Kong’s opposition-free legislature unanimously passed the city’s national security law, known locally as Article 23. The first arrests under that law, of six people accused of publishing seditious posts on social media, were announced on Tuesday.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
