Last week, nine high-profile Hong Kong democracy activists were prosecuted on charges related to the 2019 mass protest movement there.
Why it’s important: The trial is a further step in Beijing’s forceful destruction of Hong Kong’s liberal political traditions.
What is happening: Among the defendants are Lee Cheuk-yan, who since 1989 has been organizing the annual Tiananmen Candle Vigil in Hong Kong every year; revered politician Martin Lee; former legislator Margaret Ng; and Jimmy Lai, owner of the Apple Daily news network.
- Defendants are accused of organizing an illegal assembly after leading a march of 1.7 million people in 2019 despite a police ban on protests.
The big picture: The charges are politically motivated and represent a degradation of Hong Kong’s traditionally independent judicial system.
- “Martin Lee is the personification of the rule of law. He knows the law, he practices law, he reverts the law,” Fred Hiatt, editor of the Washington Post’s editorial page, wrote in a Feb. 21 issue.
- “The fact that Chinese leader Xi Jinping now wants to put this distinguished 82-year-old lawyer in prison perfectly illustrates the dictator’s disregard for the law. It shows, as it turns out, that no one in Hong Kong is safe from the arbitrary repression of the Chinese Communist Party, “Hiatt wrote.
Context: The charges are unrelated to the national security law that Beijing enforced in Hong Kong in 2020. This law cannot be invoked for incidents that occurred before it came into force in July 2020.
- But the Hong Kong authorities, under the leadership of China, have followed all avenues of prosecution against pro-democracy activists. Several activists who have already been charged with misdemeanors under existing laws, including Lai, have recently seen additional charges under the national security law, which carries much harsher punishments, including up to 10 years or even life imprisonment.
- “I have four trials for four incidents,” Lee Cheuk-yan told me in a phone call Monday morning just before entering court for his trial.
- When I asked him if he had been charged under national security law, he said, “Not yet.”
What to see: China is considering replacing the 117 seats in the Hong Kong legislature that currently hold largely pro-democracy representatives, according to a Wall Street Journal report, and giving them to members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference based in Hong Kong. -Peking.
- The Hong Kong government also said it had found “deficiencies” in the editorial management of RTHK, the city’s public broadcaster, and announced that the director of the independent media would be replaced by a bureaucrat with experience in security but without journalistic background.
The summary: National security law has made it much more dangerous for Hong Kong residents to openly oppose lawsuits with political motives, even if the charges are not under that law, making it much easier for Beijing to consolidate. authoritarianism in the city.
In depth: With the Hong Kong arrests, China is outlawing its own democracy