Pro-democracy leaders in Hong Kong convicted over anti-government protests
Seven of Hong Kong’s leading pro-democracy advocates, including a media tycoon and an 82-year-old veteran of the movement, were convicted Thursday for organizing and participating in a march during massive anti-government protests in 2019 that triggered a crackdown on dissent.
The verdict was the latest blow to the flagging democracy movement as the governments in Hong Kong and Beijing exert greater control over the territory. Hong Kong had enjoyed a vibrant political culture and freedoms not seen elsewhere in China during the decades it was a British colony, and Beijing had pledged to allow it to retain those freedoms for 50 years when it took the territory back in 1997. But the Chinese government has recently ushered in a series of measures that many fear puts Hong Kong a step closer to being no different from cities on the mainland.
Jimmy Lai, the owner of the outspoken Apple Daily tabloid; Martin Lee, the octogenarian founder of the city’s Democratic Party; and five former pro-democracy lawmakers were found guilty in a ruling handed down by a district judge. They face up to five years in prison. Two other former lawmakers charged in the same case had pleaded guilty earlier.
According to the ruling, six of the seven defendants convicted Thursday, including Lee and Lai, carried a banner that criticized police and called for reforms as they left Victoria Park on Aug. 18, 2019, and led a procession through the center of the city. The seventh defendant, Margaret Yee, joined them on the way and helped carry the banner.
Police had given permission for a rally at the park but had rejected an application from the organizer, the Civil Human Rights Front, for the march.
Organizers estimated that 1.7 million people marched that day in opposition to a bill that would have allowed suspects to be extradited to mainland China for trial — a measure that infuriated Hong Kongers who cherished their judicial system. The bill sparked months of demonstrations that sometimes led to violent clashes between protesters and police.
Thousands of people are fleeing Hong Kong amid a crackdown by Beijing that prompted Britain to loosen visa rules for residents of its former colony.
The legislation was eventually withdrawn, but the protesters’ demands expanded to include calls for full democracy. Instead, Beijing has responded by cracking down even harder on dissent, including a new national security law passed in June and changes last month that will significantly reduce the number of directly elected seats in Hong Kong’s legislature.
As a result of the clampdown, most of Hong Kong’s outspoken activists are now in jail or in self-exile abroad.
Former lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan, who was among those convicted Thursday, expressed disappointment in the verdict, saying he and his fellow residents had the constitutional right to march. He is known for helping to organize annual candlelight vigils in Hong Kong on the anniversary of the 1989 massacre of pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
“We are firm that we have the right to assemble,” he said. “It is our badge of honor to be in jail for walking together with the people of Hong Kong.”
When I was a young man in the 1970s, I joined hundreds of thousands of desperate Chinese to swim miles across the sea to Hong Kong, our beacon of freedom.
Six of the nine defendants in the case have been released on bail on the condition that they do not leave Hong Kong and they hand in all their travel documents. They are due back in court April 16, where mitigation pleas will be heard before sentencing.
Lai is among those who remains jailed on other charges, including collusion with foreign forces to intervene in the city’s affairs, a new crime under the national security law imposed on the city by Beijing last summer.
The law has put a chill on dissent, all but quashing public protest, which was already diminished because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Authorities have used the sweeping legislation to arrest prominent pro-democracy advocates. They have also detained activists on other charges, such as participating in illegal assemblies.
Martin Lee, also a former lawmaker, has been an advocate for human rights and democracy in the city since its handover to China in 1997, though he disagreed with the violent tactics adopted by some of the protesters in 2019.
Ahead of Thursday’s court session, supporters and some of the defendants gathered outside the court, shouting, “Oppose political persecution” and “Five demands, not one less” — a reference to democracy supporters’ demands of amnesty for arrested protesters, universal suffrage and other measures.
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