Veteran Hong Kong activists on trial over large democracy rally
16 February, 2021
Veteran Hong Kong activists went on trial on Tuesday (Feb 16) for organising one of the primary democracy protests to engulf metropolis in 2019, part of a sweeping crackdown targeting Beijing's critics during the last 18 months.
The nine defendants include a number of the city's most prominent pro-democracy campaigners, many of whom are staunch non-violence advocates who've spent decades campaigning in vain for universal suffrage.
Included in this are Martin Lee, an 82-year-good old barrister who was simply once chosen by Beijing to greatly help write Hong Kong's mini-constitution, and Margaret Ng, a 73-year-previous barrister and former opposition lawmaker.
Mass media tycoon Jimmy Lai, currently in custody after his arrest under Beijing's new national protection law, can be among those on trial.
Others are leading customers of the Civil Human Rights Entrance, the coalition that organised a series of huge rallies throughout 2019.
They each face up to five years in jail if convicted.
As they entered courtroom on Tuesday, a few of the activists flashed a three-finger salute, symbolic right now used across Asia to protest authoritarianism.
The group has been prosecuted for organising an unauthorised assembly on August 18, 2019 - one of the biggest to convulse Hong Kong that year as persons took to the streets for seven straight a few months calling for democracy and greater police accountability.
Organisers estimated 1.7 million persons proved - almost one in four Hong Kong residents - though that number was challenging to independently verify.
Those involved described it as the second-largest protest of 2019, and it had been undoubtedly one of the primary rallies that year, with demonstrators marching peacefully all night in a sea of umbrellas and thundery skies.
Protests convulsed Hong Kong for seven right months in 2019 due to persons took to the streets calling for democracy and greater law enforcement accountability AFP/Lillian SUWANRUMPHA
Protests found in Hong Kong can only just do it with the authorization of authorities, though privileges groups have long criticised the utilization of unauthorised assembly prosecutions.
Since 2019, protests have already been all but outlawed with authorities either refusing permission on protection grounds or later due to the pandemic.
The rallies in 2019 quite often descended into clashes between riot police and a knot of hardcore participants, and posed the most concerted challenge to China's rule because the former British colony's 1997 handover.
The movement eventually fizzled out beneath the combined weight of exhaustion, most 10,000 arrests and the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic.
Authorities have got since unleashed a wide crackdown and Beijing offers imposed a fresh security laws which criminalises a lot of dissent.
China and Hong Kong's leaders say the law is required to restore steadiness to the finance hub.
Critics counter that Beijing features shredded the liberties and autonomy it all promised Hong Kong could maintain following the handover.
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