“It seems that the goal of both governments is to silence the opposition,” Davis wrote in an email from New York. “Why align an entire case around moderates [democrats] who has long advocated nonviolence? “
“The grudge is old,” he says, “but the effort to get these people out is new.”
His efforts date back to before the transfer to China in 1997, which many in Hong Kong saw as an opportunity to build democratic government for the first time in the city’s history. In more than a century as the crown colony of Great Britain, its residents have never been allowed free elections or the right to govern on their own.
Many Hong Kong residents were eager to lose their colonial yoke and become part of China, feeling they could help the nation devastated by Mao to emerge from decades of cruel politics and poverty. Then came the spring of 1989. After members of the People’s Liberation Army opened fire on people in Beijing, some who joined a wide-ranging demonstration for freedom, Hong Kong broke out in peaceful protests. The Chinese government knew that it needed to calm the residents and the markets. Beijing agreed to a constitution that granted freedom to protest, assemble, publish and attack. Hong Kong, promised the constitution, would have 50 years of these rights and a “high degree of autonomy”, and would end up choosing the leaders through democratic elections. China’s legislature would have the power to intervene only in matters of foreign affairs and national security.
From the beginning, Beijing has been unable to stay out of Hong Kong affairs. The pace of these intrusions accelerated in 2014. At that point, Xi Jinping was president and Hong Kong was again stirring for full voting rights, especially the freedom to choose its chief executive without Beijing’s control. This sparked a massive 79-day protest known as the Umbrella Revolution, which was named after the device deployed when police poured pepper spray into the crowds. Beijing did not yield to its demands, but the exhausted Hong Kong inhabitants knew that there were many souls with similar ideas whose fury could be brought under control again.
Protest-related lawsuits have increased over the course of 2020, with new ones starting all the time. The government zealously enforced strict public collection laws, still in force since British colonial times. More danger for the protesters came last June, when Beijing imposed a broad national security law full of vague provisions. Designed to prevent acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreigners, the law allows the government to reform challenging acts as something more sinister and destabilizing than mere opposition to laws or officials. Some protest tactics, like shouting or posting popular slogans in search of revolution, were considered attacks on the Chinese central government. Some people face trial for this.
The law ensnared 100 people in prisons and at least 54 lawsuits, including Lai, the founder of Next Media. Lai pushed for US sanctions against China during interviews with foreign officials and media, acts that prosecutors might consider colluding with foreign forces at the trial. Most residents were surprised in February, when the Hong Kong government accused 47 lawyers, district councilors and activists of conspiring to subvert the government. His offense is linked to an unofficial primary election that aimed to choose a slate strong enough to overthrow the pro-China majority bloc and put more pressure on Beijing.
In a city that previously seemed to mark most holidays with protests, there is now no tolerance for major disagreements organized with the government. Police have not sanctioned any march, vigil or protest since early 2020, citing the pandemic. This included the annual candlelight vigil that honored the victims of Tiananmen each June 4 since 1990. (To be sure, people are being prosecuted for overcoming barriers and gathering in Victoria Park on June 4, 2020 to mark the event. .) Many residents are convinced that, under the new security law, the vigil will never happen again in Hong Kong.
Since the protests of democracy Calmed down in early 2020, and the police began work on arresting hundreds of protesters, observers wondered why the seven people in Court 3 were charged. Martin Lee and his colleagues played minor roles, at most, in the previous year’s demonstrations. Only one defendant served on the Human Rights Civil Front, the civic group that has been organizing mass marches for years. (That man, Au Nok-hin, pleaded guilty on the first day of the trial. He is now in prison, also charged in the primary July case.)
Watching the trial for several of his 20 days, Avery Ng, president of the League of Social Democrats, the party founded by Leung Kwok-hung, said that prosecuting the seven was “the easiest way to incite fear among the public”. Ng faces charges of protest disorder in a separate case. “If the most careful and least radical leaders can be judged for walking in the rain,” he told me during a break, “that’s an obstacle for the rest of us.”
The trial has become, in part, a referendum on Hong Kong’s “procession” laws, a relic of British colonial rule that gives the police the right to allow or deny any public march, however peaceful. In the closing days of the trial, the defendants’ lawyers argued that the procession after the legal rally should never have been banned. With all the subway entrances congested, the defendants and thousands of participants had no choice but to leave the crowded rally on foot. And yes, they shouted slogans and carried a banner in doing so.
The police told the court that they refused to sanction the march requested by the Front that day because several previous protests ended with some people throwing Molotov cocktails. Allowing a moving protest, the theme of which was anti-police, they said, would have created problems. By imposing a ban, the defense argued, the police penalized the peaceful group for the violent acts of others.
The defense also raised a constitutional argument: allowing the police to sanction or block protests created an undue block on their freedom of expression, in violation of the city’s constitution.