HONG KONG: A Hong Kong court began hearing appeals on Monday (Jul 14) from 12 democracy campaigners jailed for subversion last year during the city’s largest national security trial.
They were among 45 opposition figures, including some of Hong Kong’s best-known democracy activists, who were sentenced in November over a 2020 informal primary election that authorities deemed a subversive plot.
Critics including the United States, Britain and the European Union said the case showed how a Beijing-imposed national security law has eroded freedoms and quashed peaceful opposition in Hong Kong.
Ex-lawmakers “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, Lam Cheuk-ting, Helena Wong and Raymond Chan are among those contesting their convictions and sentences in hearings that are scheduled to last 10 days.
Owen Chow, a 28-year-old activist who was sentenced to seven years and nine months in jail – the harshest penalty among the dozen – has also lodged an appeal.
Former district councillor Michael Pang withdrew his appeal application on Monday morning, leaving a total of 12 appellants.
Some of them have already spent more than four years behind bars.
The activists were accused of organising or taking part in an unofficial primary election that aimed to improve the pro-democracy camp’s chances of winning a majority in the legislature.
They had hoped, once a majority was secured, to force the government to accede to demands such as universal suffrage by threatening to indiscriminately veto the budget – a plan that trial judges said would have caused a “constitutional crisis”.
Defence lawyer Erik Shum said that vetoing the budget was a form of “check and balance” built into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution that lawmakers could deploy as a last resort.
“In order to check the unpopular exercise of powers by the executive, one of the important measures is to tie the purse,” he told the court.
Shum said lawmakers should not be answerable to the courts over how they vote because of the separation of powers.
“Let politics remain in (the legislature) and let the public decide, not the judges.”
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/hong-kong-court-democracy-campaigners-appeals-subversion-5237276
