Defendants, loved ones brace for 'Hong Kong 47' sentencing
· CNA · JoinDozens of pro-democracy campaigners are to be sentenced on Tuesday (Nov 19) in Hong Kong, drawing to an end a marathon trial of 47 democrats in a subversion case that has lasted years.
Emilia Wong is the girlfriend of one of the defendants, Ventus Lau. She has made several hundred prison visits since his arrest in 2021.
On Friday she headed to prison again, but this time brought with her a new black coat, new shoes and a new pair of glasses for Lau to wear for Tuesday’s court hearing.
Her boyfriend and others expect sentences ranging from several years, to life in prison.
Wong says she feels calm, taking each day as it comes.
“My relationship with him has been stuck … not stuck, but it's been unchanged for three years and eight months, and it may continue this way even longer in the future. I feel powerless.”
“It would be embarrassing for me to even consider breaking up with him. It feels like I'm being dragged along. But within the confines of this relationship, and day by day, I strive to live as well as I can."
Democrats in Hong Kong once enjoyed wide-ranging freedoms under a "one country, two systems" formula, after Britain handed the city back to Chinese rule in 1997.
But in 2020, a year after pro-democracy protests swept the city, China imposed a national security law, under which Wong’s boyfriend and 46 other democrats were charged with "conspiracy to subvert the state power”, for organising and taking part in an unofficial primary election in July 2020.
Over 600,000 people voted in that poll.
It was seen as a symbolic protest against the National Security Law, as participants defied warnings from officials that the vote could be illegal.
Reuters has spoken to lawyers and relatives of half a dozen defendants, and they say the convictions have quieted some of the most popular and determined pro-democratic voices.
In May this year, 14 of the 47 democrats were found guilty of the charge of conspiracy to commit subversion, and two were acquitted.
Others pleaded guilty, hoping for reduced sentences.
Wong says this case has swept away the entire pro-democracy camp in Hong Kong.
“They have undergone a kind of social death, and they are temporarily dead in the political arena. Just like that, they were all caught in a single net.”
Legal experts say the treatment of the democrats has been a departure from the city’s common law traditions.
Most were denied bail, and they were all denied a jury trial.
Director of the China Institute at the School of Oriental and African Studies, Steve Tsang, says the case of the 47 democrats shows even moderate opposition against the Hong Kong government could land people in trouble.
“And the trial of the 47 is clearly intended by the authorities to put a marker down that if you try to do anything like that, then you will face very severe consequences."
"And the range of people who are being caught up in this network of 47 will show that even people who are known to be very, very moderate indeed can be caught in the net. So you don't have to be a very hot-headed activist to find yourself at risk. Moderates are at risk too."
Hong Kong authorities say the legal process has been impartial, while condemning criticism from Western democracies. Beijing also maintains that Hong Kong's autonomy is intact.
The US has described the trial and its guilty verdicts as “politically motivated”, while demanding the defendants be released.
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