Rough justice confirms HK fall

There is a particularly odious perniciousness about the latest prison sentence imposed on 74-year-old leading Hong Kong democrat and newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai. Given that he already is in jail and facing charges under China’s draconian security laws that are likely to keep him there for the rest of his life, another sentence of 13 months may appear inconsequential. But it is not because it shows just how unrelentingly malign Beijing’s repressive, colonial-style rule in Hong Kong is as it seeks to destroy the democracy movement and what remains of human rights and decency in the territory.

This time, having already been stripped of his highly successful publishing empire, the internationally admired Lai was charged with attending an event in June last year at the city’s Victoria Park at which candles were lit to commemorate the lives of the hundreds killed by China during the 1989 Tiananmen uprising. For that, Lai was convicted of “inciting and taking part in an unlawful assembly”.

In a mitigation letter read out by his lawyer, he wrote courageously: “If commemorating those who died because of injustice is a crime, then inflict on me that crime and let me suffer the punishment … so I may share the burden and glory of those young men and women who shed their blood on June 4 (1989).” Lai added that he had not participated in the actual assembly but held a candle up in front of journalists to remind the public to remember the group of young men and women “who died for truth and justice”.

Hong Kong-born judge Amanda Woodcock, who was called to the Bar in England in 1989, was unmoved. She said Lai and seven other men and women sentenced with him were arrogant to believe it was more important to remember Tiananmen than to protect public health during the pandemic.

The opportunity to use so minor an infraction as lighting a commemorative candle as a reason to add to the penal woes of Lai and his fellow democrats could not be overlooked by Beijing’s enforcers. Nothing better shows how right democracies including Australia have been to highlight the fate of human rights in Hong Kong as among the main reasons for the diplomatic boycott they are imposing on the impending Beijing Winter Olympics. The indignant hotheads in Beijing were enraged, of course, but Joe Biden was dead right, too, when he included Hong Kong democrats in last week’s global Summit for Democracy.