Australian man Gordon Ng sentenced in Hong Kong to more than seven years’ jail

Hong Kong: Australian man Gordon Ng has been jailed for seven years and three months by a Hong Kong court, as part of a mass sentencing of pro-democracy activists that underscores Beijing’s triumph in crushing political opposition under its sweeping national security law.

Ng was one of 47 democracy campaigners – many of whom were former opposition politicians – charged with conspiring to commit subversion under the Beijing-imposed law over their involvement in holding an unofficial primary election in July 2020. Forty-five of the campaigners received jail sentences on Tuesday, though most had already been detained for more than three and a half years.

Legal scholar Benny Tai, who was labelled the key organiser, was sentenced to 10 years in jail, the most severe sentence under the law to date, in a case many people in Hong Kong and internationally viewed as designed to silence political dissent in the financial hub.

Gordon Ng (centre) was first detained in 2021.

The sentences ranged between four and 10 years, an outcome more moderate than some feared, with the maximum penalty ranging between 10 years and life imprisonment, but one that left supporters of the jailed activists and the city’s democracy movement devastated.

“The punishment is too severe, truly too severe. He went to prison at 42 and won’t be out until he is 50. I just can’t accept it,” said a close friend of Ng’s in Hong Kong, who requested anonymity to speak publicly.

A Hong Kong-Australian citizen, Ng attended Waverley College in Sydney’s east before studying mathematics and commerce at the University of NSW. He has been in jail since his February 2021 arrest.

In a statement to court at his mitigation hearing in June, Ng said he supported Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement because he believed “their cause of striving for democracy a noble one”. Free and fair elections were “the best counterbalance against a power potentially becoming tyrannical,” he said.

Huge crowds queue for public gallery seats outside Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court for the sentencing of 45 pro-democracy activists including Australian citizen Gordon Ng.Credit: Daniel Ceng

Foreign Minister Penny Wong said the Australian government was “gravely concerned” by the sentence handed to Ng and other pro-democracy campaigners, and called on China to cease “suppression of freedoms of expression, assembly, media and civil society”.

“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,” Wong said in a statement.

“This is a deeply difficult time for Mr Ng, his family and supporters. Our thoughts are with them following the sentencing.”

Known as part of the “Hong Kong 47″, Ng and 13 others were convicted in May following a 118-day trial in the city’s biggest prosecution of pro-democracy figures.

Two were acquitted and a further 31 activists pleaded guilty, including Tai and former student leader Joshua Wong, who was jailed for four years and eight months.

Hundreds of people queued outside West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday morning in light rain, some having camped out for days, to try to secure a spot in the public gallery on what many regarded as a black day for the city, which once enjoyed a high degree of political freedom and autonomy from the Chinese mainland.

A heavy police presence monitored the crowd.

“The case is a mirror of how crumbled and devastated Hong Kong now is in terms of its rule of law, the systems, and the government,” said Margaret Chan, 60, who began queuing on Saturday.

In their May judgment, the court’s three judges, who were handpicked by the Hong Kong executive, found the primary election was devised to preselect pro-democracy candidates that could wrest majority control of the Hong Kong legislature at official elections later that year. It found they intended to create a “constitutional crisis for Hong Kong” by enabling the democrats to veto the government’s budgets and force the city’s leader to resign.

Margaret Chan, 60, began queuing on Saturday afternoon for a public gallery seat.Credit: Daniel Ceng

The government ultimately postponed the election citing COVID-19. When it was held more than a year later, many prominent opposition figures had been arrested and Beijing had overhauled the electoral process so that only “patriots” could stand.

In convicting Ng, the court found he played an active role in facilitating the primary election, even though he did not attend coordination meetings, did not run as a candidate and wasn’t known to any of the other candidates. It relied on evidence of WhatsApp messages between Ng and Tai, as well as Facebook posts and a front-page advertisement he placed in the AppleDaily newspaper supporting the primary election.

In their sentencing decision, the court reduced Ng’s sentence by three months, finding that “[Ng] might have been misled by [Tai] and acted in the mistaken belief as to the lawfulness of the scheme”.

Kevin Yam – a Hong Kong democracy activist and former lawyer who relocated to Australia in 2022, and knows a number of the other jailed campaigners personally – described the sentencing as a painful and poignant day for them and Hong Kong.

“If posting on Facebook to encourage people to vote in a non-binding vote can get you seven years, three months in prison, that tells you everything you need to know about where Hong Kong is right now,” he said.

Beijing inserted the national security law into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution on June 30, 2020, claiming it was necessary to restore order after massive anti-government protests rocked the city for months in 2019 and 2020, triggered by a bill to allow the extradition of suspects to the mainland.

People leave the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts after the sentencing.Credit: AP

The law has been condemned by Western governments for its use in cracking down on the freedoms and autonomy promised to Hong Kongers under the “one country, two systems” when Britain handed the financial hub back to China in 1997.

Since 2020, authorities have used the law to round up hundreds of opposition figures, academics, trade unions and dissidents.

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