The 45 defendants – including former high-profile lawmakers, activists, unionists and journalists – appeared at the West Kowloon court on Tuesday to hear from judges how long they face behind bars after their conviction earlier this year.
Among those set to be sentenced are Joshua Wong, a former student leader and poster child of the city’s once thriving pro-democracy movement, legal scholar Benny Tai, who led the city’s 2014 Occupy protests, Gwyneth Ho, a former journalist famous for live-streaming protests in 2019 and former lawmaker Leung Kwok-hung, known for his decades-long advocacy for democracy during both British and Chinese rule.
Police pull prominent activists from the queue to conduct search, including Raphael Wong Ho-ming.
Beijing ramped up its crackdown on opposition voices after huge and sometimes violent democracy protests convulsed the international financial hub 2019.
Tuesday’s mass sentencing illustrates how far that transformation has progressed, turning an outspoken city of 7.5 million, where protests were once common, into something resembling a mirror of the authoritarian Chinese mainland with a who’s who of opposition figures behind bars and other critical voices silenced or fled overseas.
The Hong Kong and Beijing governments have repeatedly defended the national security law’s imposition, arguing that “restored stability” after the mass, sometimes violent, anti-government protests that shook the city in 2019.
The group, which originally had 47 defendants, had been charged with “conspiracy to commit subversion” for their roles in holding an unofficial primary election in 2020 to improve their chances in citywide polls.
But city leaders, police and prosecutors argued the democratic primary amounted to a “massive and well-organized scheme to subvert the Hong Kong government” – and was in violation of the sweeping national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 in the wake of mass anti-government protests the previous year.
The case was the largest single prosecution to date under the new national security law, with those on trial representing a broad swathe of Hong Kong’s now dismantled democracy movement. Two defendants were acquitted.
Known widely as the trial of the “Hong Kong 47,” the landmark prosecution was closely watched by human rights groups and foreign governments concerned about sweeping changes in the once pluralistic business hub, where political protests and opposition politics were largely tolerated.
