Hong Kong Protest Leaders Plead Guilty to Breaking China’s Illegal ‘National Security Law’

HONG KONG, CHINA - NOVEMBER 2: Protestors march on the street in Causeway bay on November
Billy H.C. Kwok/Getty Images
John Hayward

China’s state-run Global Times crowed on Thursday “dozens of former local politicians and extreme separatist activists” in Hong Kong pled guilty to “conspiring to subvert state power.”

In other words, pro-democracy activists were pressured into guilty pleas under the grotesque “national security law” Beijing illegally forced on Hong Kong to crush the last vestiges of the island’s autonomy.

China disregarded Hong Kong’s “Basic Law” and overrode its legislature to impose the “national security law” in June 2020, effectively criminalizing all dissent from the Communist regime. As the Global Times’ ugly victory lap demonstrates, the law makes it easy for Communist stooges in Hong Kong to accuse any dissident of “separatism” or “colluding with foreign powers.”

Beijing then proceeded to rig Hong Kong’s elections to ensure only slavishly loyal Communists could stand for the legislature. Hongkongers scarcely bothered to vote in the sham elections, so Chinese state media declared a “landslide victory” for the “patriotic” winners.

Horrified Western governments and international human rights organizations denounced the brutish “national security law” and demanded its repeal, led by the United Kingdom, which correctly described the law as a violation of the promises China made upon taking control of Hong Kong in 1997. 

At the end of July 2022, a United Nations panel of experts urged the immediate nullification and swift repeal of the national security law, accusing China of using it as a pretext for cracking down on journalism and political dissent. The U.N. noted over 200 people have been arrested under the law, 12 of them children.

The brutal regime in Beijing scoffed at these pleas and plowed ahead with prosecuting dissidents and journalists, with only the thinnest pretense of respect for the rule of law.

Pro-democracy media mogul Jimmy Lai and his media outlets, accused of “sedition” and “conspiring to commit collusion with foreign forces,” will have no jury at their “trial” – a clear violation of Hong Kong’s legal system.

Lai is already in jail for “crimes” such as holding a vigil for the victims of China’s Tiananmen Square massacre. He could face life in prison for the charges filed against him under the national security law.

Hong Kong officials also ordered trial without jury for the “47 democrats,” a group of pro-democracy activists who comprise the largest case to be brought under the national security law. Beijing’s apparatchiks absurdly insisted jury trials would be impossible because the “foreign elements” the defendants allegedly “colluded” with could “pervert the course of justice” by threatening the “safety of jurors and their family members.”

The “47 democrats” won a single modest victory on Thursday when a Hong Kong magistrate lifted the ban on media coverage of the court proceedings against them. Previous requests to lift the blackout order were refused on the grounds that “negative comments” from the public could “jeopardize” the trial.

Magistrate Peter Law ruled that details already heard in court could now be disclosed to the public, although he refused to answer one defendant who asked if the transcripts of preliminary hearings would be unsealed, and whether the defendants could be punished for breaking the ambiguous restrictions on media coverage that remain in effect.

The Global Times on Thursday celebrated defendants such as “former legal professor Benny Tai Yiu-ting and secessionist Joshua Wong Chi-fung” entering guilty pleas, rather than taking their chances with a system so clearly rigged against them.

“In addition to Tai and Wong, other defendants who pleaded guilty included former lawmaker Claudia Mo, who was seen at the scene when black-clad rioters vandalized the Legislative Council (LegCo) building on July 1, 2019. Former lawmakers Eddie Chu and Alvin Yeung were also among the list of those who pleaded guilty,” the Global Times reported happily, counting 29 guilty pleas in all.

Most of the “strong evidence” against these defendants simply consisted of public statements they made about implementing a legislative strategy Beijing did not like, or publicly supporting Western sanctions against the Communist regime. The defendants also held an unofficial “primary election” in 2020, defying the national security law’s totalitarian requirements for only “patriotic” candidates a few weeks after it was imposed.

The national security law treats all of these actions as sedition, secession, and foreign collusion, so most legal protections for the defendants were swept aside, “making the defendants believe that there is no chance of winning,” as the Global Times gleefully put it.

The Global Times and its stable of “Chinese experts” ominously portrayed the fate of the “47 democrats” as a warning not just to Hong Kong dissidents, but to Taiwan as well.

“The ending of the anti-China rioters and secessionists in Hong Kong today could be the Taiwan separatists’ tomorrow,” the Global Times intoned.

Kurt Zindulka / Breitbart News

“In particular, some separatists in Hong Kong colluded with secessionists in Taiwan to endanger national security, and the law enforcement authorities will continue investigating and following up on the case. With the legal network being established and fully applied, those forces will see their existing room become much smaller,” the Communist Party paper warned.

The Global Times did not elaborate on how Chinese officials would “take criminal punishment measures” against “those diehard ‘Taiwan independence’ elements who deliberately challenge the law,” but the thug regime in Beijing has certainly proven it is not above kidnapping. 

The Global Times suggested China’s “enforcement” measures against Taiwan would become more forceful in the wake of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s “provocative visit” to Taiwan, and the subsequent publication of a menacing new “white paper” by the Chinese military that threatened to use force against “separatist activities” by the Taiwanese, especially if “external forces” are involved.

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