Hong Kong sentences seven pro-democracy activists to up to 16 months in jail for 2019 protests

A Hong Kong district court sentenced seven pro-democracy activists to between 11 and 16 months in prison on Wednesday for their participation in an unauthorized demonstration on October 20, 2019, when thousands of people took to the streets to show their rejection. to the draft of the dreaded National Security Law.

The protests were dispersed by the police with tear gas and water cannons.

Activists Figo Chan, founder of the now-dissolved Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), Raphael Wong and Avery Ng, of the League of Social Democrats party, and former MPs Cyd Ho, Yeung Sum, Albert Ho and Leung Kwok-hung, had pleaded guilty to charges of organizing and inciting participation in that demonstration deemed illegal by the Hong Kong authorities.

All the defendants, except Raphael Wong, were already incarcerated serving prison terms in relation to other cases brought for the same crime.

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These sentences, the most recent against those who demonstrated in 2019, have been handed down precisely by virtue of that National Security Law, in force since July 2020, against which thousands of Hong Kongers protested, including those now convicted. Pro-democracy activists called on the population to demonstrate - in some cases, the protests degenerated into violent incidents - considering that this legal norm is repressive and violates in practice the promise to respect freedoms in the autonomous city that Beijing formulated when the former British colony was returned to him in 1997.

Critics of the law see its ultimate goal as ending dissent in Hong Kong, a claim rejected by authorities in mainland China and the city itself.

The judge who handed down a sentence against the seven defendants this Wednesday, Amanda Woodcock, defended the sentence, stating that, although the mini-constitution of the financial enclave "guarantees freedom of assembly, procession and demonstration," those rights "are not absolute."

"The restrictions were applied in the interest of public safety, public order and the protection of the rights and freedoms of others," said the judge.

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Hong Kong activists and opponents immediately disagreed with this argument. Outside the court, after the hearing, Chan Po-ying, president of the League of Social Democrats, said: "We hope that everyone understands that this is a political persecution."

Since the enactment of the National Security Law in the National Assembly in Beijing, on June 30, 2020, and until last July, 117 people had been arrested in Hong Kong on charges contemplated in it, of which at least 64 have been already formally accused. The main opposition newspaper, the

Apple Daily,

has closed due to pressure. About fifty of the main pro-democracy activists and politicians who participated in an informal primary election are in jail, while those still at large have chosen to keep their activities and public statements to a minimum. Thousands of people have opted for exile.

The effects of the law began to be noticed immediately once it was enacted. Despite the fact that the authorities in Hong Kong had assured that it would not have retroactive effects, already on the first day of its entry into force, on July 1 of last year, a dozen people were detained. The first of these detainees, Tong Ying-kit, accused of crashing a motorcycle against a group of police officers while waving a flag with pro-independence slogans - (“liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our era”, the slogan of the 2019 demonstrations ) ―Was sentenced on July 30 to nine years in prison.

“In one year, the national security law has put Hong Kong on a fast track to becoming a police state and created a human rights emergency for those who live there,” Yamini Mishra, Amnesty International's regional director for Asia and Oceania.

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