‘Seditious T-shirt’ enough to send Chu to jail for up to 10 years

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Greetings from Singapore.

There has been more unsettling news out of Hong Kong, where Beijing’s strangulation of political dissent has been paraded through the court system with frequency this year.

Anti-government protesters filled the streets of Hong Kong in 2019, before Beijing imposed the national security law. Credit: Bloomberg

In the once cosmopolitan international financial hub, “sedition” now officially extends to the wearing of clothes with pro-democracy slogans.

On Monday, Chu Kai-pong, 27, became the first person to be convicted under a new national security law known as Article 23, enacted by the city’s Beijing-friendly legislature earlier this year, after he pleaded guilty to acting with a “seditious intention”.

His crime was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” and a yellow mask printed with “FDNOL” – short for “five demands, not one less”. Both slogans were frequently used during the massive, and at times violent, pro-democracy protests that were waged on the city’s streets for months in 2019.

Protesters carry “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times” flags in Hong Kong in 2019.Credit: AP

Chu is facing up to 10 years in jail, and has already spent three months in prison this year for a separate conviction for wearing a T-shirt with the same slogan under a colonial-era sedition law that had been revived by authorities.

Article 23 expands on the draconian Beijing-imposed national security law (NSL), which was implemented in 2020 and gave authorities sweeping powers to arrest people for secession, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign powers, in a crackdown that officials claimed was necessary to restore stability. Australia has joined other Western governments in repeatedly condemning the laws’ broad application to criminalise political dissent and curtail basic civil freedoms.

A few weeks ago, Hong Kong marked another ignominious “first” under the national security crackdown – the first conviction of journalists on sedition charges since the former British colony was handed back to China in 1997.

A district court judge found two editors, Chung Pui-kuen and Patrick Lam, from the now-defunct Stand News, guilty of publishing seditious articles and found the outlet had become “a tool to smear and vilify” Beijing and Hong Kong authorities.

Indeed, almost 300 Hongkongers have been arrested on national security grounds since 2020, and dozens of pro-democracy activists are now languishing in the city’s prisons.

Allow me to draw your attention to one of them – Australian dual citizen Gordon Ng.

Gordon Ng, jailed in Hong Kong.Credit: Aresna Villanueva

Born in Hong Kong, Ng moved to Australia at 13. He attended Waverley College in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, before studying mathematics and commerce at the University of New South Wales, eventually returning to Hong Kong to work in the finance sector.

His case has flown under the radar, mostly out of sight and out of mind of the Australian public since his arrest in 2021.

He is facing a possible maximum life sentence for what prosecutors claim was his organising role in an unofficial primary election held in July 2020 that aimed to help pro-democracy candidates win majority control of the Hong Kong legislature and veto government bills. His case is part of the “Hong Kong 47”, named for the group of politicians and activists charged with conspiring to “subvert state power”, in what stands as the biggest prosecution under the new law to date.

Ng was one of 14 who fought the charges but were convicted after a 118-day trial in May by judges handpicked by Hong Kong’s leader to preside over the case. Two were acquitted and a further 31 pleaded guilty.

A pedestrian passes the Court of Final Appeal in Hong Kong. A British judge resigned from the top court because the rule of law in the city was in “grave danger” and judges operate in an “impossible political environment created by China”.Credit: AP

Ng and his 44 co-convicted now face an anxious wait to learn their fate at upcoming sentencing hearings, expected any time before the end of the year.

Because Hong Kong authorities do not recognise Ng’s dual citizenship and consider him to be a Chinese citizen only, he has been denied access to Australian consular officials who have made at least 14 requests to visit him.

The last public words we have from Ng are in a statement he made at his mitigation hearing in June, where he defended the principles of the activists’ democratic campaign but disputed authorities’ attempts to cast him as an instigator.

“Because ‘power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’, I believe that the holding of fair and regular elections provides the best counterbalance against a power potentially becoming tyrannical,” he said.

“It is for these reasons that I support the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, as I believe their cause of striving for democracy a noble one, and also a sensible one for the continued development of this city.”

The law, together with Article 23, has not only had a chilling effect on Hong Kong society, it has dampened post-COVID recovery efforts amid a flight of capital and expats from the city as some international businesses have relocated offices to Singapore, long the city’s chief rival.

Consular representatives from various countries arrive at Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts for a verdict hearing for 47 pro-democracy activists in May. Fourteen opposition figures were found guilty in the city’s largest-yet national security trial.Credit: Bloomberg

Meanwhile, the four Australian judges who serve on the city’s top court – none of whom have presided over national security law appeals to date – have come under scrutiny for their decision to remain at the apex of a judicial system that enforces these laws. While there have been no allegations of the judges’ independence being compromised, the court was rocked this year by the resignation of two British judges who cited the city’s political situation and erosion of the rule of law as the reasons for their early departure.

As for Gordon Ng, he will likely pay a high price for his role in the fight for Hong Kong’s future.

We shouldn’t forget him.

Pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong were widespread throughout 2019 and into 2020.Credit: AP

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