HK47 sentences – what you’d expect

Most of Hong Kong’s leading pro-democracy figures are sent to prison for trying to win an election.

The sentences could have been even harsher. Maybe that’s going to be the narrative: government appeals for longer spells in prison after oh-so independent judges prove too wishy-washy.

Benny Tai, who gets 10 years, is being cast as ringleader and ‘advocate of a revolution’. Perhaps he is guilty of knowing the wording of the constitution too well – better than Beijing’s officials did back in April 1990 when they promulgated the Basic Law. (The government and court see a distinction between lawmakers rejecting a budget ‘indiscriminately’ and in some other way. The Basic Law doesn’t mention any such difference, but apparently the former is ‘subverting state power’.)

Several others who helped organize the primaries get sentences of around six or seven years (after, like Tai, pleading guilty). Other participants get four to seven, with those pleading guilty getting the lighter penalties. Pleading guilty in such circumstances is rational. Most have already done several years in jail. HKDC projects likely release dates: 13 in 2025, 8 in 2026, 5 in 2027, 7 in 2028, 1 in 2029, 9 in 2030, 2 in 2032.

Some of these people are brilliant in such areas as the law, housing/land policy and community service, and would wipe the floor with many of the lawmakers and policymakers who pass the ‘patriots only’ test. 

Kevin Yam says…

Every single one of these sentences is a travesty in itself. But the one that really topped it all was the Gordon Ng sentence (and not just because he’s a fellow Australian): 7 years and 3 months for being a bit player in the process, doing nothing more than running a Facebook page that encourages people to vote in an informal process? Really?

I reiterate: these people have been convicted and jailed for (a) trying to work within the HongKong Basic Law process for dealing with legislative deadlocks over government budgets; and (b) doing what politicians in democracies routinely do (threatening to filibuster budgets and other laws to try and gain a particular political or policy outcome). 

Now personally: I am not OK today. Benny Tai was the co-author of my first academic article over 20 years ago before either of us were activists. Alvin Yeung used to live near me. Claudia Mo was active in my neighbourhood as a politician. Lam Cheuk-ting and Helena Wong were people I campaigned for in the past. Leung Kwok-hung and I shared a love for whisky. I can go on and on. These people were friends and comrades. This is not just political – it’s personal for the defendants, their families and their friends. For all the inconveniences and stresses of a bounty over my head, it does not begin to compare with those who are languishing in prison for doing things that would be considered normal in free societies.

From Gwyneth Ho’s statement on Facebook…

12. The situation is dire, yet when going into the details, it becomes a bit comical: the unforgivably evil subversive act of the accused was aiming for a parliamentary majority with the power to veto the annual budget. Following such logic, one may as well claim that democracies around the world suffer subversion attempts every 4 to 6 years. In a 1984-esque reality, though, democratization—or just calling for it—amounts to subversion of state power. Makes perfect sense.

13. Behind the rhetoric of secession, collusion with foreign forces, etc., our true crime for Beijing is that we were not content with playing along in manipulated elections. We organized ourselves to rise above partisan fragmentation, came together, and attempted to break through. We dared to reach for actual power to hold the government accountable. Even though it was enshrined as a right of the people under the Basic Law, Beijing never planned to see it actualized.

(For those who can’t stand/access Facebook, the whole thing is below).

From the Wall Street Journal…

The trial displayed just how firmly Beijing has cemented its control of Hong Kong, a former British colony that was returned to China in 1997. While the territory was once a hotbed of dissent, the mass protests that once filled the streets have disappeared. The legislative council, which once had a vocal pro-democracy faction, now has no opposition.

“This is the trial that put all the opposition, pro-democracy leaders in jail,” said Eric Yan-Ho Lai, a research fellow at the Georgetown Center for Asian Law. “It’s unprecedented, because before 2020, Beijing had long been tolerant of political dissent in Hong Kong for decades.”

UK Member of Parliament Yuan Yang mentions the case.

Much more such international coverage and commentary is on the way, with Hong Kong government responses no doubt to follow. 

Gwyneth Ho’s full statement…

1. I first read about Maria Kolesnikova before I was taken to punishment—tales of how she ripped her passport apart at the border to refuse deportation, choosing jail over exile, along with trivial accounts of solitary prison life. How, as a professional flutist, she filled her head with imaginary flute music. How she kept on writing letters despite 80% of them being confiscated.

2. The protest in Belarus during 2020-21 was the last movement I followed real-time, before my own imprisonment. It went viral in this part of the world as protesters adopted the Be Water tactic of the 2019 Hong Kong Movement. A few years on, a Belarusian political prisoner’s timely advice passed on all the way from her prison in Belarus to mine in Hong Kong in ChatGPT-translated English.

3. How curious. Today, we enjoy multiple advanced communication platforms, yet people are more polarized than ever. Genuine and honest conversations have become more difficult, rendering democracy less and less convincing as the better system in the face of multiplying crises. But, now living in a world of only pen and paper, with heavy scrutiny and severe delays spanning weeks—I relearn, time and again, that genuine human connection is possible and why it is worth fighting for.

4. The Hong Kong democratic movement of 2019 is renowned for its impressive arsenal of tactics, combined with the creative use of technological platforms. These tactics travelled across social media, were transplanted into other movements, and bloomed anew. But what holds people together and makes all the creativity possible lies beyond technology or tactics. The movement itself is open to interpretations (and criticisms), yet what has stayed with me to this day, nearly four years later, is something simpler.

5. People are engaged. They are eager to connect with each other. Injustice and oppression, once witnessed, together with bravery and determination, once felt, bred an unstoppable urge to express oneself politically and to be part of the struggle; but it didn’t turn into a homogenizing essentialism. Learning from the failures of past movements, people made extra efforts to communicate and incorporate diverse ideas. We did not avoid lengthy, difficult conversations, even amid imminent violence, with rubber bullets flying over our heads. We were adamantly leaderless, each taking our own initiatives and emphasizing individual and equal contributions to the movement. We remained vigilant against disinformation, careful not to let rumours tear the movement apart from within.

6. Decentralization unleashed a political momentum unseen in Hong Kong and revealed the city’s exciting diversity, which had previously been constrained by traditional organizational structures. Accustomed to critical and intense political debate, people in Hong Kong only needed to overcome their hesitation about whether their actions mattered to emerge as their own initiators of creative new ways of struggle. They reformed connections into more direct, efficient, and inclusive networks of activism.

7. When social institutions crumbled one after another around us, we rose above fear and emerged as a genuine civil society, each living out the true meaning of citizenship. Though democracy was denied at various institutional levels, we built one from the bottom up.

8. Meaningful conversations are only possible when you have faith that people around you, and yourself, are not blind followers of someone else, that they are clear of what they are fighting for and take responsibility for their needs. Independent in their decisions but acting for the collective.

9. It’s not so much hope for a better future that drives the movement, because hope has always been scarce when you’re a city of 7 million facing a superpower, but that even if our vision of the future is different, we trust each other, we can rely on each other to do our best.  We trust, we act, we can create. All become one, united in our differences.

10. It was only natural that such a collective would demand to be heard and recognized in a way that the regime had to respond to. When the regime closed in and took away the people’s right to protest, we turned to the alternative path of elections.

11. I ran in the last free and fair election in Hong Kong. For that, I was prosecuted in the first Soviet(?)/CCP-style subversion case tried in a common law court. I pleaded not guilty to defend the political expression of 610,000 Hong Kong people, which the regime is trying to distort and reduce into a conspiracy of 47 foreign-brainwashed, faithless pawns, with life imprisonment on the table.

12. The situation is dire, yet when going into the details, it becomes a bit comical: the unforgivably evil subversive act of the accused was aiming for a parliamentary majority with the power to veto the annual budget. Following such logic, one may as well claim that democracies around the world suffer subversion attempts every 4 to 6 years. In a 1984-esque reality, though, democratization—or just calling for it—amounts to subversion of state power. Makes perfect sense.

13. Behind the rhetoric of secession, collusion with foreign forces, etc., our true crime for Beijing is that we were not content with playing along in manipulated elections. We organized ourselves to rise above partisan fragmentation, came together, and attempted to break through. We dared to reach for actual power to hold the government accountable. Even though it was enshrined as a right of the people under the Basic Law, Beijing never planned to see it actualized.

14. 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.

15. Prosecuting democratic politicians and activists across the spectrum, the case was seen as the turning point at which Hong Kong became a lost cause. People were scared into silence and forced to give up hope for democracy in Hong Kong.

16. Sitting in the dock, I went through the historical trials I had read about in my mind. Decades on, defiant and dignified defences seemed like natural building blocks of ultimate victory. But back in the moment, when the regime’s rule seemed infallible and change was nowhere in sight, why does one still choose to fight despite certain conviction?

17. The narrative put forward by the prosecution is not just a distortion of facts or a threat to the larger public. It goes much deeper—they are forcing the accused into self-denial of their lived experiences. That genuine solidarity was just a delusion. That the bonds, the togetherness, the honest conversations among people so different yet so connected, cannot be real after all. That the difficult co-building of a collective united in difference with a shared vision for a better future was just a utopian dream.

18. But no. They are not just idealistic dreams but realities that I have lived through. I choose to fight to prove that such connections are not only possible but have actually been lived out and continue to live on. The only delusion here is the belief that brutal oppression can ever deny their existence.

19. It is not a responsibility nor moral obligation. It is the strong urge within me to do justice to what I witnessed and experienced, for they constitute part of me and define who I was. And I am now going to define who I am.

20. I stand alone confronting these accusations, not as an individual, but as one of all those who have ever stood in the streets and raised their voices to demand autonomy for the city. As well as all those who have ever stood in the same position before unjust courts anywhere in the world.

21. I travelled far through words, from contemporary Russia, mainland China, Thailand, to 20th century Chicago, Taiwan, Pretoria. I met Navalny countless times, whose cases filed with the ECtHR are now open for all politically accused around the world to cite in their own legal battles. I learned from the Pussy Riot trial how to use the power of your opponents against you: when speech and beliefs are used as evidence against them; when speech and beliefs are used as evidence against you, you are also granted legal permission to elaborate on them, as extensively as you see fit.

22. And in this particular case, who else has more to offer than the human rights defenders in mainland China? Every final statement and paper about their decades of struggle, the legitimacy of the Chinese constitution, and the power of the people.

23. None of us have won our cases. Many I read about are still serving harsh sentences in unknown places, unheard and forgotten. Most of them would never have the chance to know how much they inspired me – the only way I could honour them was to fight the best fight I could. And so I did.

24. I was sent to solitary confinement for refuting the false testimony of a prosecution witness from the dock. Just before that I had read about Maria Kolesnikova. Her case was in closed court, but the lawyers risked their qualifications to reveal that on the day of the verdict, Kolesnikova made her final statement, a little less than 3 hours, about “moral choice, about love for people, about the future of Belarus.

25. I tried to imagine making a speech only among people who were complicit in depriving you of your freedom, looking at their apathetic (if not mocking) faces. I can’t. And yet she did. She poured her heart out in a speech she knew no one would hear a word of.

26. She was violently muted, but the reverberation! It went all the way across the Eurasian continent, breaking through closed courts and reporting bans, fenced walls and censorship to reach me at the time I needed it most. I felt close to her, even though I may never meet her. I can feel her dearly.

27. It’s that feeling again. Like looking through a cloudy gas mask into the determined eyes of a complete stranger, or walking alongside another in thick, irritating smog toward the light. I have come so far in search of it. The human connection that would only come through shared acts of courage, between individuals who dare to follow their true selves. For to dare is to lose one’s ground momentarily, yes, but not to dare, is to lose oneself

28. Today, no democracy is immune to the crisis of legitimacy that results from a deficit of public trust. Calls for the “orderly” and “efficient” rule of authoritarianism are growing inexorably. News of fruitless movements and the continued plight of persecuted freedom fighters in distant, hopeless places is certainly discouraging.

29. But you can certainly help a lot. Defend and repair your own democracy. Push back against the corruption of power, restore faith in democratic values through action. Give authoritarian dictators one less example of failed democracy to justify their rule, and give freedom fighters around the world one more inspiration to continue the struggle with better alternatives. Fight on the ground most familiar and dear to you. Prove to the world at every possible moment, no matter how small, that democracy is worth fighting for.

30. For while suffering may evoke concern and compassion, it also blurs and reduces the sufferer to a pitiful but characterless victim, part of a nameless number. What really defines our identity is not the suffering itself, but the way in which we face it. It is in action that one defines oneself, and only people who truly know who they are can open up, make new connections in the most unexpected circumstances, and bring about change. It is for the wonders of human diversity, creativity and possibility, for a world in which we can connect as our own true selves, that we dare to act, and we dare to suffer.