Anywhere else, it wouldn’t have been controversial: a public vote by pro-democracy activists trying to strengthen their hand in legislative elections to decide who should run. More than 600,000 people took part in the peaceful, unofficial poll.
But this was Hong Kong, just after the imposition of a national security law by Beijing, and officials had warned that even a straw poll would be taken as defiance.
On Tuesday, the price of defying Beijing was made clear. Forty-five former politicians and activists who had organized or taken part in the 2020 primary by the opposition camp were sentenced by a Hong Kong court to prison, including for as long as 10 years.
The sentences were the final step in a crackdown that cut the heart out of the city’s democracy movement, turning its leaders into a generation of political prisoners. Among them were veteran politicians, former journalists and younger activists who had called for self-determination for Hong Kong.
In a courtroom that had to be created just to accommodate them, the 45 defendants sat shoulder to shoulder on Tuesday on long benches, behind a glass partition and flanked by police officers. A judge read their sentences aloud, referring to them not by their names but by their numbers on a list. The hearing was over in half an hour.
It was the most forceful demonstration of the power of a national security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in response to months of large protests against Chinese rule in 2019.
The court sentenced Benny Tai, 60, a legal scholar and opposition strategist, to 10 years in prison. Twenty opposition politicians and activists were given terms ranging from five to nearly eight years. Joshua Wong, 28, a prominent pro-democracy activist, was among 24 others whose sentences ranged from just over four to just under five years.
Gwyneth Ho, 32, a former journalist who was known for covering a mob attack on antigovernment demonstrators trapped in a subway station, was sentenced to seven years for running as a candidate. She had refused to plead guilty.
“Our true crime for Beijing is that we were not content with playing along in manipulated elections,” said a statement posted on Ms. Ho’s Facebook account, apparently by her supporters, on Tuesday after the sentencing. “We dared to confront the regime with the question: will democracy ever be possible within such a structure? The answer was a complete crackdown on all fronts of society.”
The trial made clear that any form of dissent or criticism, however moderate, carried significant risk, analysts said. “If you are being critical of the authorities both in Hong Kong and in China, then it’s open season,” said Steve Tsang, a Hong Kong-born political scientist and director of the SOAS China Institute in London.
The ruling Communist Party in China says the law is needed to purge threats to Beijing’s sovereignty, but human rights activists, scholars and Western governments have said that it has eroded Hong Kong’s once-vaunted judicial independence.
Even before their sentences were handed down, many of the defendants, who were arrested in early 2021, had already been in jail for nearly four years, as they awaited and then stood trial. That was because the law has made it harder for defendants to be released on bail, which in most nonviolent cases is routinely granted.
Instead of a jury, the case was heard by three judges handpicked by the city’s Beijing-backed leader, as allowed by the law.
“The authorities wanted to show the public that they have the power to bring a big group of people to trial all at once,” said Patrick Poon, a visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo who studies freedom of expression in Hong Kong and China. “They want to show residents that anyone who tries to protest like this group of people will receive their same fate.”
Prosecutors accused the defendants of “conspiracy to commit subversion,” a national security offense, arguing that the objective of the election primary was to “undermine, destroy or overthrow the existing political system and structure of Hong Kong.”
The outcome of the primary made clear that the residents who voted favored candidates who were prominent supporters of the 2019 antigovernment demonstrations. The pro-democracy camp argued that the primary vote was little different from others held in democracies around the world. The hope was to maximize the camp’s chances of gaining more seats in a legislative chamber that already heavily favors the Beijing-backed establishment.
But they never had a chance to test the plan: The election was postponed, and most of the candidates were arrested.
Mr. Tai, the legal scholar who was sentenced to 10 years, had designed the electoral strategy, and prosecutors deemed him a mastermind. Mr. Tai had long been involved in efforts to persuade China to live up to a promise that has been central to Hong Kong since its 1997 return to Chinese control: that its residents would someday get to choose their own leaders. In 2014, he was one of the leaders of the Occupy Central movement that brought the city’s central business district to a halt in a peaceful call for freer elections.
Other defendants included Leung Kwok-hung, a 68-year-old activist known as Long Hair for his unkempt mane, who was sentenced to six years and nine months; Claudia Mo, 67, a veteran former lawmaker, sentenced to four years and two months; and Lam Cheuk-ting, 47, a former anti-corruption investigator, sentenced to six years and nine months.
Mr. Tai and 30 other defendants had pleaded guilty. The court convicted 14 of them in May and acquitted two others.
Outside, hundreds of people waited in line to enter the gallery, braving a downpour and a heavy security presence around the courthouse, including an armored vehicle, police cars and barricades. Several dozen police officers were stationed on every street corner along the whole block.
As she left the courthouse, Elsa Wu, the mother of Hendrick Lui, one of the defendants, unfurled a poster in protest of the sentencing. Several police officers led her away into a police van and tried to slide the door shut.
“Tell me, why does he have to go to prison?” she called out, beating her fist. Mr. Lui was sentenced to more than four years in prison. “He is a political prisoner. He shouldn’t be in prison. He is a good person. Why does he have to be in prison?” she said.
Thomas Kellogg, the executive director of the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, said he thought the case would be seen by many in the international community as the “final nail in the coffin for the rule of law in Hong Kong.”
Despite the prospect of more prison time, some defendants were simply anxious for the trial that had left their lives in limbo to come to a conclusion, according to friends who had visited them.
Emilia Wong, a gender rights activist, said in an interview ahead of the sentencing that her boyfriend, Ventus Lau, an organizer of the 2019 antigovernment protests, had been studying toward a degree in translation. She said she had been regularly visiting him in detention for the past three years, but it was clear the isolation was taking a toll on him.
“The scary thing about prison is not being locked up in one place. It is the loss of connection with people and society that is scary. To him, it was painful,” she said.
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