Last week, nine high-profile democracy activists in Hong Kong stood trial on charges related to the mass protest movement there in 2019.
Why it matters: The trial is another step in the heavy-handed destruction of Beijing’s liberal political traditions in Beijing.
What is happening: The accused include Lee Cheuk-yan, who has been organizing Hungarian annual Tiananmen candlelight vigil every year since 1989; honored politician Martin Lee; former legislator Margaret Ng; and Jimmy Lai, owner of Apple Daily.
- The accused are accused of arranging an illegal meeting after leading a march of 1.7 million people in 2019, despite a police ban on protests.
The whole picture: The charges are politically motivated and represent a deterioration of Hong Kong’s traditionally independent legal system.
- “Martin Lee is the personification of the rule of law. He knows the law, he exercises rights, he respects the law,” wrote Fred Hiatt, editor of the Washington Post editorial page, in an unpublished publication on 21 February.
- “The fact that Chinese leader Xi Jinping now wants to put this 82-year-old lawyer in jail illustrates the dictator’s contempt for the law perfectly. It shows, as it is meant to show, that no one in Hong Kong is safe anymore. is against the arbitrary oppression of the Chinese Communist Party, ‘Hiatt wrote.
Context: The charges are not related to the national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020. This law cannot be invoked on incidents that occurred before it came into force in July 2020.
- But the Hong Kong authorities, led by China, have pursued every path of prosecution against pro-democracy activists. Several activists already charged under existing crime laws, including Lai, have recently seen additional charges under the National Security Act, which include much harsher penalties, including ten years or even life in prison.
- “I have four trials for four incidents,” Lee Cheuk-yan told me in a call Monday morning just before he went to court for his trial.
- When I asked him if he was charged under the National Security Act, he said, “Not yet.”
What to look for: According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, China is considering replacing the 117 seats in Hong Kong’s legislature currently held by largely pro-democracy representatives, and this to the members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, which in Hong Kong based, will give. -Beijing.
- The Hong Kong government also said it had found ‘shortcomings’ in the editorial management of RTHK, the city’s public broadcaster, and announced that the director of the independent news agency would be replaced by a bureaucrat with security experience but no journalism. background.
The conclusion: National security legislation has made it much more dangerous for Hong Kong residents to openly oppose politically motivated prosecutions, even if the charges are not under the law, making it much easier for Beijing to further entrench authoritarianism in the city.
Go deeper: With arrests in Hong Kong, China bans democracy itself