47 charged under new security law
HONG KONG: Hong Kong police charged dozens of dissidents with subversion yesterday in the largest use yet of Beijing’s sweeping new national security law, as authorities move to cripple the finance hub’s democracy movement.
Last month, 55 of the city’s bestknown democracy campaigners were arrested in a series of dawn raids.
Yesterday, police confirmed 47 of them had been charged with one count each of “conspiracy to commit subversion” — one of the new national security crimes — and will appear in court this morning.
Beijing is battling to stamp out dissent in semi-autonomous Hong Kong after swathes of the population hit the streets in 2019 in huge and sometimes violent democracy protests.
The security law, imposed on the city last June, criminalises acts deemed to be subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.
Those charged are routinely denied bail until trial and face up to life in prison if convicted.
The charged activists are a broad cross-section of Hong Kong’s opposition, from veteran former prodemocracy lawmakers such as James To and Claudia Mo to academics, lawyers, social workers and a host of youth activists.
Some struck a cautiously defiant tone as they prepared to report to the police yesterday to hear the charges.
“Democracy is never a gift from heaven. It must be earned by many with strong will,” Jimmy Sham, a key organiser of 2019’s huge protests, told waiting reporters outside a police station as he arrived.
“We can tell the whole world, under the most painful system, Hong Kongers are the light of the city. We will remain strong and fight for what we want,” he added.
The alleged offence of those arrested for subversion was to organise an unofficial primary last summer to choose candidates for the city’s partially elected legislature, in hopes that the prodemocracy bloc might take a majority for the first time.
Many of those candidates were ultimately disqualified from standing, and authorities scrapped the election because of the coronavirus.
But Chinese and Hong Kong officials described the primary as an attempt to “overthrow” and “paralyse” the city’s government and therefore a threat to national security.
Western nations have accused Beijing of using its crackdown to shred the freedoms that were promised under the “One Country, Two Systems” setup when the former British colony was returned to China.