Hong Kong 47 sentencing starts

Full background from HKFP. Update here. People were lining up outside the court yesterday. There are only five seats available to the public in the main courtroom. 

Reuters says…

Jail terms are expected to range from several years for participants to possible life imprisonment for principal offenders.

…One defendant, Eddie Chu, a former journalist, now suffers from glaucoma and sometimes cannot see clearly which affects his mood, according to his friend Debby Chan.

John, the husband of Winnie Yu, another defendant, who did not wish to disclose his full name due to the sensitivity of the matter, said he stood by her decision to not plead guilty despite knowing the chance of acquittal was low.

“It’s because she wants to say something,” John told Reuters. “Stick to our beliefs, don’t change our thoughts easily because of others, be ourselves … I think this experience will be passed down for generations.”

Some legal experts say the treatment of the democrats has been a departure from common law traditions. Most were denied bail, and they were all denied a jury trial.

Among the 47 are popular public figures like Long Hair and Joshua Wong. If they are at liberty, they could – in theory – build active followings that develop into some sort of alternative source of power. Hence expectations of long sentences (for taking part in primary elections and a plan to use legislative budget-voting procedures defined clearly in the Basic Law to pressure the administration and potentially force it to stand down).

Jimmy Lai’s trial resumes tomorrow. (A half-minute clip here shows Chinese officials ordering reporters out of a UK-China meeting in Brazil at which Prime Minister Starmer mentions Hong Kong, Jimmy Lai and other issues.)

And farewell to Transit Jam, which was never political in the ideological sense, but pulled no punches in exposing government shortcomings in road safety and other areas…

We were forced to shut down after government threats to our founder and his family.

An update (forget which year it is).

Not only can you not hold primary elections – you can’t surf…

Hong Kong has 42 public beaches managed by the LCSD and surfing is prohibited at all of them.

One of those is Big Wave Bay, which is also the only beach on Hong Kong Island that has rideable waves. Despite the ban, it has been a popular surfing spot for decades.

However, in June, the LCSD, a department under the CSTB, took the step of putting up new signs stating “no surfing” in English and Chinese, adding to the notices and banners already listing the rule.

Since then, there have been cases of police officers and LCSD staff trying to catch surfers breaking those rules.

The surfing community said the crackdown began after Undersecretary for Security Michael Cheuk Hau-yip said thrill-seeking residents were putting their lives in danger, and exposing frontline officers to risk, by chasing waves or searching out strong winds during extreme weather.

[Lawmaker Adrian Pedro] Ho wrote to the LCSD this month asking for a meeting to explore ways that surfers could practise without the fear of being prosecuted after a 10-year-old, who learned at Big Wave Bay, joined the Swiss national team because there was no way for him to progress further in the city.

In contrast, China had its first Olympic surfer ever at this year’s Summer Games, with 15-year-old Yang Siqi reaching the women’s round of 16 in Tahiti.