Hong Kong convicts 14 pro-democracy activists

The three presiding judges wasted little time in presenting their verdicts in the case of the “Hong Kong 47”, members of the city’s pro-democracy political opposition. Over the course of two minutes on May 30th, the justices declared 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.

The activists’ crime was to have held a primary election in 2020 to 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 a national-security law imposed by the central government. The defendants’ attorneys called it normal electoral politics.

The election of 2020 was eventually postponed because of covid-19. In the interim, the 47 were arrested and the legislature was restructured to exclude those not deemed “patriots”. The verdicts, which are likely to result in prison sentences (in some cases for perhaps as long as life), represent the ongoing strangulation of dissent in Hong Kong.

Despite initial suggestions that the national-security law would be used sparingly, 292 people have been arrested and 159 charged under it, according to a database maintained by Eric Lai of ChinaFile, part of the Asia Society, an American NGO. None of the accused had been found innocent until Lawrence Lau and Lee Yue-shun, former district councillors, were acquitted on May 30th.

It is difficult to know whether that was a failure of the oppressive system or evidence that even when it comes to national-security trials (which are handled differently from other cases) an ember of judicial independence still glows. The most cynical view is that the government was growing embarrassed by its 100% conviction rate in such trials. But the justice secretary looks likely to appeal against the not-guilty verdicts.

In March Hong Kong enacted a new national-security law, known as Article 23, which complements the existing law. On May 28th the first arrests were made under the new measure. Seven suspects have been detained for advocating “hatred” of the government. The accusations seem related to social-media posts about the anniversary on June 4th of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The smothering of dissent has turned the observance of national-security trials into a quiet form of protest. So many Hong Kongers turned out to watch the HK47 verdicts that the queue snaked around the block. In today’s Hong Kong, this amounts to a big show of discontent. ■

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