Penny Wong ‘gravely concerned’ as Aussie Gordon Ng gets seven years’ jail in Hong Kong pro-democracy crackdown

Gordon Ng’s sentencing, alongside leaders of Hong Kong’s former opposition parties, was made after Xi Jinping told Anthony Albanese to take ‘great care’ of relations with Beijing.

Australian Gordon Ng has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison under Hong Kong's National Security Law. Picture: YouTube

Australian Gordon Ng has been sentenced to more than seven years in prison as part of the biggest crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement since Beijing imposed a national security law on the former British colony in 2020.

Ng was one of 47 democracy campaigners – dubbed the “Hong Kong 47” – who were charged with conspiring to commit subversion for their involvement in an attempt to win a majority in the city’s local elections.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the Australian government was “gravely concerned” by the sentence, which was delivered in Hong Kong hours after Chinese President Xi Jinping told Anthony Albanese to take “great care” of ­relations with Beijing.

“Australia has expressed our strong objections to the Chinese and Hong Kong authorities on the continuing broad application of national security legislation, including in application to Australian citizens,” Senator Wong said in a statement issued shortly after the sentencing on Tuesday.

“We call for China to cease suppression of freedoms of expression, assembly, media and civil society, consistent with the Human Rights Committee and Special Procedure recommen­dations, including the repeal of the National Security Law in Hong Kong,” she said.

“This is a deeply difficult time for Mr Ng, his family and supporters. Our thoughts are with them following the sentencing,” she added. “The Australian government has advocated at senior levels in support of Mr Ng’s best interests and welfare and has sought consular access to Mr Ng. We will continue to do so.”

Gordon Ng was first detained in January 2021.

Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Simon Birmingham said the sentence was “appalling and unacceptable”.

“The Albanese government has the Coalition’s strong bipartisan support to emphatically pursue Australia’s rejection of the persecution and detention of Gordon Ng and other pro-democracy advocates in Hong Kong,” he said.

“The draconian national security laws imposed by the Chinese government have stifled freedoms for which Hong Kong was renowned, and the Coalition again urges the restoration of those rights which had previously been guaranteed by the Basic Law and Sino-British Declaration.

“The crackdown on these freedoms in Hong Kong reverberates around the world, including in Australia through the bounty the Chinese government still holds over two other Australian residents. That action must be dropped – against them and other defenders of democracy around the world.”

Ng was among five people ­singled out as organisers of the informal election primary that led to the subversion charges. He and pro-democracy politicians Au Nok-hin, Andrew Chui and Ben Chung received sentences of up to seven years and three months.

Benny Tai, identified as the plan’s “mastermind”, received a 10-year sentence.

Forty-seven people were initially charged after they were ­arrested in January 2021, making this case the largest by number of defendants.

Two were acquitted in May.

Leticia Wong, a former district councillor for a since-disbanded pro-democracy party who attended the sentencing, told AFP that she found the terms were “encouraging people to plead guilty and testify against their peers”.

“For those who refused to be tamed, punishment is obviously heavier,” Ms Wong said.

The aim of the election primary, which took place in July 2020, was to pick a cross-party shortlist of pro-democracy candidates to increase their electoral prospects.

If a majority was achieved, the plan was to force the government to meet the 2019 protesters’ demands – including universal suffrage – by threatening to veto the Hong Kong city budget.

The three senior judges handpicked by the government to try security cases said the group would have caused a “constitutional crisis”.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese holds hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer at the G20 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, hours before the sentencing in Hong Kong. Picture: Getty Images

On Wednesday, media tycoon Jimmy Lai – publisher of Apple Daily, a masthead loathed in Beijing – will testify in court in Hong Kong in his collusion trial. He has been in prison for almost four years and has pleaded not guilty.

Last year, Hong Kong police put a $HK1m ($191,800) bounty on Melbourne-based Australian lawyer Kevin Yam and Ted Hui, a former Hong Kong politician who now lives in Adelaide, in another precedent-breaking application of the Beijing-authored National ­Security Law.

Posters of Mr Yam and Mr Hui remain plastered on walls of Hong Kong International Airport.

Ten foreign judges have retired from Hong Kong’s appeals bench since the National Security Law was introduced.

In June, Canadian judge Beverley McLachlin and British judges Lawrence Collins and Jonathan Sumption quit the court, citing “the political situation” in the city.

Four of the six remaining foreign judges on the appeals bench are Australian: Robert French, Patrick Keane, James Allsop and William Gummow.

Additional reporting: AFP