A 27-year-old man became the first Hong Kong resident on Monday, September 16, to be sentenced under the new security law adopted earlier this year that further restricts freedoms in the territory, known as“Article 23”Chu Kai-pong was arrested on June 12, the anniversary of clashes between police and pro-democracy protesters five years earlier, at a subway station, after wearing a T-shirt for 25 minutes. “Liberating Hong Kong, a revolution of our times” and a yellow mask with a print “FDNOL”acronym in English for “five demands, not one less”, two slogans of the movement that shook the city in 2019, before its draconian takeover by the Chinese authorities.
He pleaded guilty “acts with seditious intent”His sentence, which could be up to seven years in prison, will be announced on Thursday. Mr Chu had already been sentenced in January to three months in prison under an earlier law for wearing the same T-shirt at the airport.
In March, under pressure from Beijing, the local executive pushed through this new text, “the order to safeguard national security”adopted during a fast-track procedure and by a Parliament, the Legislative Council, itself reformed in recent years to no longer include only the deputies “patriots” pro-Chinese rule, while many former democratic candidates have been arrested. In the spring, the authorities justified their adoption by referring to Article 23 of the mini-constitution dating from the handover of the former British colony in 1997 and which provides for texts punishing seditious acts.
This legislation follows another, the national security law, imposed in the summer of 2020, which punishes acts of separatism or subversion with sentences of up to life imprisonment, widely used since then against opponents, including an influential press chief, Jimmy Lai. This involves completing the “defects”Secretary for Security Tang Ping-keung took over in the spring.
Repressive model
In four years, the city has lost most of its freedoms. Young people who dared to demonstrate in 2019 to reject a bill allowing extraditions to mainland China, but who also demanded the protection of their fundamental rights and universal suffrage in defiance of Beijing, have since been arrested en masse. They were then tried in dozens or, when they could, took the path of exile, in Taiwan or London in particular. In particular, a trial in 2023 brought together 47 defendants, tried for having organized primaries in the Democratic camp in July 2020, before the legislative elections.
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