45 Hong Kong pro-democracy activists are sentenced to jail in city’s biggest national security trial
A Hong Kong court sentenced dozens of leading pro-democracy figures to prison under a national security law that critics say has been used to suppress dissent.
HONG KONG — A Hong Kong court sentenced dozens of leading pro-democracy figures to up to 10 years in prison Tuesday in the single largest trial under a national security law that critics say has been used to all but eliminate political dissent in the Chinese territory.
Benny Tai, 60, a former law professor at the University of Hong Kong who co-organized an unofficial primary election at the center of the case, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, the longest of the 45 sentences and the longest since the national security law was introduced in 2020. The others ranged from four years and two months to seven years and nine months.
The defendants had faced up to life imprisonment under the national security law, which Beijing imposed in response to pro-democracy demonstrations that roiled Hong Kong for months in 2019.
Tai was among 47 opposition politicians, academics, activists and others charged in 2021 with conspiracy to commit subversion, one of four crimes the law established. Two of the defendants were acquitted in May.
They were charged in connection with their roles in an unofficial primary election held in July 2020, weeks after the national security law went into effect. The primary, which aimed to boost democrats’ chances of winning a majority in an upcoming election for the Hong Kong legislature, drew more than 600,000 voters in the city of 7.5 million.
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