(TibetanReview.net, May31’24) — As the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre – in which peaceful student-led protesters urging democratic reform were massacred by the People’s Liberation Army of the Communist Party of China – approaches near, authorities in the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong have jailed 14 democracy activists and arrested six others. They spell the death knell of China’s promise of a “one country, two systems” policy for Hong Kong as far as democracy and human rights are concerned.
The move is seen as a stark warning to the people of Hong Kong where until a few years ago, certain democratic rights were largely respected and the anniversary used to be marked with massive protest rallies. China made it a crime for its residents to show any kind of dissent against the communist party leadership and policies by adopting a Hong Kong national security law in 2020.
Known as the “Hong Kong 47”, those sentenced were members of the city’s pro-democracy political opposition. It took just two minutes on May 30 for the justices, handpicked by the Hong Kong government, to declare 14 of the defendants guilty of conspiracy to commit subversion in the biggest national-security trial in the city’s history. Thirty-one had already pleaded guilty. Two were acquitted, reported the economist.com May 30.
The activists’ alleged crime was that they held an unofficial primary election in 2020 to pick candidates to run for office and possibly improve their chances of winning control of the local legislature. With that control, they planned to demand greater democracy—or else to oppose the government’s budget, which would have forced the city’s Beijing-backed chief executive to step down. The authorities alleged that the scheme amounted to an illegal subversion of state power under the new national security law.
They would have “[created] a constitutional crisis for Hong Kong” if they had indeed been elected to the legislature, bbc.com May 30 cited the court’s ruling as saying.
Outside the courthouse, Vanessa Chan, the wife of Leung Kwok-hung, a former lawmaker who was among those convicted, was arrested along with three other activists for trying to stage a protest for “disorderly conduct”. Others convicted included former lawmaker Helena Wong, journalist-turned-campaigner Gwyneth Ho, and ordinary Hong Kongers who joined the mass protests of 2019 such as nurse Winnie Yu, the report said.
Most of the defendants have been in jail since their arrest in Jan 2021 – even though the trial didn’t start until early 2023. They were denied bail and pre-trial detentions soon became the norm in National Security Law cases.
The case drew huge attention as yet another test for Hong Kong’s civil liberties under Beijing’s rule. Along with the trial of billionaire Jimmy Lai, it spotlighted the growing criticism that the National Security Law has been used to crush dissent, the report noted.
The UK has said the case showed how authorities have used the National Security Law to “stifle opposition and criminalise political dissent”.
The EU has said it “marks a further deterioration of fundamental freedoms and democratic participation”.
Australia has expressed “strong objections” to the “broad application” of the law. One of the convicted campaigners, Gordon Ng, is an Australian citizen.
Hong Kong officials have hailed the law’s nearly 100% conviction rate while legal experts have said that it shows how it is being used to silence dissent – nearly 300 people have been arrested under it for a wide range of acts.
This was “a trial of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement,” Eric Lai, a research fellow at the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, has told the BBC.
And Sunny Cheung, who also ran in the Jul 2020 primary but fled the city and now lives in the US has said, “These verdicts effectively wipe out the whole political opposition in Hong Kong.”
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Earlier, on May 28, Hong Kong police made their first arrests under a newly passed local national security law over social media posts deemed “seditious” by authorities. The city’s national security police arrested the six on suspicion of committing acts with seditious intent, edition.cnn.com May 28 cited a police statement as saying.
Security chief Chris Tang has confirmed that one of those arrested was Chow Hang-tung, a leading organizer of the huge Tiananmen vigils that used to be held in Hong Kong but are now effectively outlawed. Chow was already in custody on charges related to her democracy activism.
The police have accused the arrested persons of taking advantage of “an approaching sensitive date” to anonymously publish seditious posts on social media since April. The “sensitive date” obviously implied Jun 4, 2024, the 35th anniversary of 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Those arrested were five women and a man, aged between 37 and 65, police have said, adding they could face up to 7 years in prison if convicted.
“Those who intend to endanger national security should not have the delusion that they can avoid police investigation by going anonymous online,” the police statement was quoted as saying.
The arrests marked the first time Hong Kong’s own national security law had been invoked since it was unanimously passed by the city’s opposition-free legislature in March, the report said.