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HONG KONG: A Hong Kong court found seven prominent Democrats guilty of unauthorized assembly charges, including 82-year-old lawyer Martin Lee and 72-year-old media mogul Jimmy Lai, the latest blow to the embattled democracy movement of the city.
Lee, who helped launch the city’s largest opposition Democratic Party in the 1990s and is often called the former British colony’s “father of democracy,” was charged with participating in an unauthorized assembly on 18 August 2019.
The silver-haired Lee and the others, all 60 and older, sat impassively as District Court Judge Amanda Woodcock rendered her decision.
“After the trial, I discovered that the prosecution was able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that all the defendants organized together what amounted to an unauthorized assembly,” the district court judge said in the full written sentence.
They were also found guilty of knowingly participating in an unauthorized gathering.
Although Hong Kong’s mini-constitution guarantees the right of peaceful assembly, Woodcock added, “restrictions are imposed, including those to preserve public safety and public order, and protect the rights of others.”
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Sentence will arrive on April 16, and some legal experts expect jail terms of 12 to 18 months. The maximum possible sentence is five years.
The other defendants included prominent attorney Margaret Ng, 73; and veteran Democrats Lee Cheuk-yan, 64; Albert Ho, 69; Leung Kwok-hung, 65; and Cyd Ho, 66. Two others, Au Nok-hin and Leung Yiu-chung, 67, had previously pleaded guilty.
A small group of supporters displayed banners outside the West Kowloon court building, including one that read “Oppose Political Persecution.”
“If we are sentenced to prison in the future for this case … it is our badge of honor to be jailed for walking with the people of Hong Kong,” said Lee Cheuk-yan, a former lawmaker who has been a pro-democracy. activist since the late 1970s.
The judge rejected a request from the prosecution to keep the nine in custody and granted them bail pending sentencing.
During the trial, defense lawyers argued that freedom of assembly is a constitutional right in Hong Kong and noted that the police had approved the peaceful demonstration in downtown Victoria Park, which turned into an unauthorized march as that the number amounted to hundreds of thousands.
Organizers claimed that 1.7 million people attended the August 18, 2019 rally (File Photo: AFP / ISAAC LAWRENCE).
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The prosecution argued that freedom of assembly is not absolute in Hong Kong.
Critics, including Western governments, have condemned the arrests of Lee and other Democrats amid the ongoing crackdown. An additional 47 high-profile democratic activists face subversion charges under national security law, most of whom have been denied bail and are in custody.
The European Union office in Hong Kong said the ongoing prosecutions of Democrats are “of great concern” and that it will continue to monitor developments.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the conventions were “yet another example of how Beijing erodes Hong Kong’s freedoms and fails to meet its international obligations under joint Sino-British declarations.”
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US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said Wednesday that he had certified to Congress that Hong Kong did not guarantee preferential economic treatment under a law that had allowed Washington to maintain a special relationship with the city, reiterating the decision reached. last year.
Blinken said China had “severely undermined the rights and freedoms of the people in Hong Kong,” through arbitrary arrests and politically motivated prosecutions, as well as “pressure on judicial independence and academic and press freedoms.”
The 2019 pro-democracy protests were fueled by Beijing’s tightening of the far-reaching freedoms promised to Hong Kong after its return to Chinese rule in 1997, and plunged the semi-autonomous city into its biggest crisis since handover.
Since then, Beijing has imposed a broad national security law, which punishes anything it considers secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison.
Since the enactment of the law, the government has tried to crush the opposition movement, banned protests and restricted political expression, and reformed the city’s electoral system to ensure that only pro-China “patriots” rule Hong Kong.
However, Chinese and Hong Kong authorities say security law and electoral reforms are necessary to restore stability and solve “deep-seated” problems, and that human rights will be safeguarded.
