Hong Kong’s High Court on Tuesday jailed 45 pro-democracy activists for up to 10 years following a national security trial that has damaged the city’s once feisty democracy movement and drawn criticism from the U.S. and other countries.
A total of 47 pro-democracy activists were arrested and charged in 2021 with conspiracy to commit subversion under a Beijing-imposed national security law which carried sentences of up to life in prison.
The Chinese and Hong Kong governments say the national security laws were necessary to restore order after mass pro-democracy protests in 2019, and the democrats have been treated in accordance with local laws.
CLOSELY WATCHED TRIAL
After a 118-day trial, 14 of the democrats were found guilty in May, including Australian citizen Gordon Ng and activists Owen Chow and Gwyneth Ho, while two were acquitted.
The other 31 pleaded guilty and all 45 were given sentences ranging from four to 10 years.
“Our true crime for Beijing is that we were not content with playing along in manipulated elections,” Ho, who was sentenced to seven years imprisonment, wrote in a Facebook post.
“We dared to confront the regime with the question: will democracy ever be possible within such a structure? The answer was a complete crackdown on all fronts of society.”
The U.S. State Department condemned the sentences and said it was imposing new visa restrictions on multiple Hong Kong officials responsible for implementing the national security law, without saying how many officials were targeted.
“The defendants were aggressively prosecuted and jailed for peacefully participating in normal political activity protected under Hong Kong’s Basic Law,” a department spokesperson said in a statement. The U.S. urged Hong Kong authorities to cease “politically motivated prosecutions” and release all political prisoners, the spokesperson said.
Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said she was “gravely concerned” about the sentences, and called on China to “cease suppression of freedoms of expression, assembly, media and civil society” in Hong Kong.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian told reporters: “No one can engage in illegal activities in the name of democracy and attempt to escape legal punishment”.
