Who are the democracy activists facing jail? | Global News Avenue

Courts on Tuesday are set to jail some of Hong Kong’s biggest pro-democracy icons, including Joshua Wong and Benny Benny, in a controversial national security case.

They are members of the Hong Kong 47 Organization Charged three years ago Crackdown under the National Security Law (NSL) imposed by China.

Officials accuse the eight women and 39 men of trying to overthrow the government by holding unofficial primaries to elect opposition candidates for legislative elections.

The primaries were held in July 2020 to help the opposition gain a large enough foothold to block pro-Beijing government bills. It attracted more than half a million voters.

The primaries were seen as a way to continue the pro-democracy movement after protests in 2019 were curtailed by the pandemic. That alarmed officials in Beijing and Hong Kong, who warned the move could violate the national security law that took effect days before the primary.

Organizers argued that their actions were permitted by the Basic Law, the mini-constitution that governs Hong Kong and guarantees some of its freedoms.

But at the end of the trial, the justices agreed with prosecutors’ argument that the plan would create a constitutional crisis if the primary winners were elected as lawmakers.

Most of the defendants either pleaded guilty or were convicted of conspiracy to commit subversion. Two people were acquitted in May, meaning 45 people will be sentenced on Tuesday.

Some are famous figures such as Joshua Wong and Benny Benny, icons of the pro-democracy protests that rocked Hong Kong in 2014.

There are also famous opposition members Claudia Mao, Huang Haiyan, Guo Jiaqi and Liang Guoxiong, nicknamed “Long Hair”.

But people like Stephen Chow, Liu Zheng and Anita Yuen represent a new generation of vocal activists. Mr Lau and Mr Chow were among hundreds of people who stormed the Legislative Council and spray-painted Hong Kong’s emblem, becoming a key moment in the 2019 protests.

There are also people who are not involved in politics but were inspired by the 2019 protests, such as social workers such as Hendrick Lui, entrepreneurs such as Mike Lam, and former nurse Winnie Yu.

Most of the defendants have been jailed since their arrests in early 2021 as pretrial detention under the National Security Law has become the norm.

The two people acquitted were barrister and former district councilor Lauren Lau and former district councilor Lee Yu-shun.

One of the key organizers of the 2020 primaries, Mr Tai has been labeled a “die-hard troublemaker” by China for allegedly advocating Hong Kong independence and describing Communist Party rule as a “dictatorship”.

Benny Tai is an academic and law professor who first rose to prominence in 2014, when he and two others launched the pro-democracy Occupy Central movement.

It was a historic civil disobedience movement calling for fair and free elections in Hong Kong, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets.

In 2019, Mr Tai was jailed for participating in the Occupy Central protests.

A year later, after the imposition of the national security law, he was fired from the prestigious University of Hong Kong (HKU) due to his criminal conviction.

Mr Tai accused the university of bowing to Chinese pressure and called it the “end of academic freedom” in Hong Kong.

By then, he was already facing charges of subversion from the National Security Coalition for organizing the primaries.

Joshua Wong is arguably Hong Kong’s most famous pro-democracy activist, his path to activism began when he was 14 years old.

By 2014, he had become the face of the Umbrella Movement, the massive student protests symbolized by umbrellas that arose alongside the Occupy Central sit-ins.

He was only 20 years old when his activism began send him to jailwhich would be the first of multiple convictions.

Months of protests erupted in Hong Kong in 2019, with hundreds of thousands marching against a controversial extradition bill that would have allowed Hong Kong people to be sent to mainland China to face trial.

In June of the same year, Mr. Huang was among thousands of people who besieged the Wan Chai District Police Headquarters, throwing eggs at the building and spray-painting graffiti on the walls.

While the demonstrations at the time were widely seen as a spontaneous “leaderless” movement, prosecutors said he led that particular protest, pointing to a video of him calling for the crowd to “completely surround police headquarters.”

He was imprisoned for his role and placed in solitary confinement.

But he remained defiant after pleading guilty: “Perhaps the authorities want me to spend sentence after sentence in prison. But I believe that neither prison, nor electoral bans nor any other arbitrary power will stop our activism.”

He was still serving his sentence when he was charged with subversion under the national security law.

Former opposition legislator Leung Kwok-hung, known as “Long Hair” because of his hairstyle, once described himself as a “Marxist revolutionary.”

The 68-year-old is known for his political theatrics – one of his signature moves is throwing bananas in protest. When he was re-sworn in as a member of the Legislative Council in 2016, he released balloons with political banners and held a yellow umbrella, declaring that “the Umbrella Movement will never end.”

This resulted in him being disqualified from the council. He was arrested and jailed multiple times for participating in protests in 2019.

After the national security law was implemented in 2020, he married his long-term partner Vanessa Chan, also known as Chen Baoying, a well-known activist. They were one of the founding members of the Social Democratic Alliance.

They said they decided to get married because they would have greater legal rights, such as prison visitation rights, if one of them went to jail.

Forty days after the wedding, Mr. Liang was charged.

Claudia Mo, affectionately known as Auntie Mo in Cantonese, was a well-known opposition legislator.

She was a reporter for AFP, covering the 1989 crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

The 67-year-old helped found the opposition Civic Party in 2006 and won a seat in the Legislative Council in 2012 after giving up her British citizenship to hold public office.

She is one of 15 MPs A large number of resignations from the Legislative Council In November 2020, four pro-democracy lawmakers were ousted. The move left the Legislative Council without opposition.

“We have to do this,” she said at the time.. “We need to protest against what may be Beijing’s eventual crackdown on Hong Kong — to silence the last vestiges of dissent in the city.”

In the early morning of January 6, 2021, the police “stormed into the living room” and arrested her. British “Financial Times” reportciting an unnamed source, described the attack as “pure atrocity.”

She has been in jail ever since. When her husband, the British journalist Philip Bowling, became critically ill, Ms Mok was not allowed to visit him from prison.

Sam is a long-time political and LGBTQ activist who also leads one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF).

The group disbanded in 2021, saying it could no longer operate amid “unprecedented” challenges posed by China’s crackdown.

Mr. Cen was violently attacked multiple times in 2019, including one time where he suffered a head injury and ended up living on the street. CHRF accused government supporters of this and other attacks on pro-democracy activists at the time, but this was never confirmed.

The 37-year-old married his partner in New York in 2013 and campaigned for Hong Kong to recognize overseas same-sex marriages. In 2023, Hong Kong’s Supreme Court granted him a partial victory by ordering the government to establish a framework for recognizing same-sex partnerships.

At that time, Mr Shum was detained for participating in Hong Kong’s primary election.

He has been denied bail multiple times, with the judge describing him as a “determined young man” who may continue to commit “acts endangering national security” if released.

Before turning to politics, the 33-year-old Gwyneth worked in a number of news media, including the Chinese version of the BBC, the government-run broadcaster Radio Hong Kong and Stand News.

She rose to fame after being beaten by a mob while reporting on a 2019 protest. The attack left her hospitalized.

She ran in the 2020 primary and won a high vote share in her district.

She said during the trial it was “inevitable” 12 democratic candidatesincluding her, were disqualified from participating in legislative elections.

“I believe most Hong Kong people know deep down that fighting for democracy under the Chinese Communist regime has always been a fantasy,” she said.

Picture from Hong Kong InMedia