• Hong Kong Condemns Leaders of the Pro-Democracy Movement for "Participating in and Organizing an Illegal Assembly"

  • Asia Only patriots can liberate Hong Kong

Guilty.

That has been the first verdict under the national security law that is gradually overthrowing the regime of semi-freedoms that Hong Kong enjoyed since the United Kingdom returned its colony to China on July 1, 1997.

It is precisely because of what happened on July 1, last year, that the Hong Kong High Court has found a 24-year-old boy named Tong Ying-kit guilty.

The young man, who worked as a waiter in a bar in the city, had been

accused of secession and terrorism

for having run over several policemen during a protest and carrying a banner with the slogan

Liberate Hong Kong, the revolution of our time

.

Tong has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The trial lasted two days with a court made up of three magistrates appointed by local authorities to try national security crimes.

The ruling has served to see how the Hong Kong justice interprets Beijing's security law and whether the city's courts will retain their independence or conform to those of mainland China.

Tong could face life in prison

, the maximum penalty under the new law. The sentence will be known next Thursday.

In the summer of 2019, peaceful marches began in Hong Kong against a bill allowing the extradition of fugitives to mainland China. The protesters got the chief executive, Carrie Lam, overthrow the law. But it was not enough because in the streets they had already embraced four other demands that they were not going to release:

withdrawing the qualifier "revolt"

from the June 12 protests, which carried 10 years in prison for those detained in the protests that day,

investigate police abuses

during the protests and have complete

universal suffrage

so that the people can also elect the chief executive.

Later, one of the financial epicenters of Asia entered a cycle of violence where the youngest protesters prevailed fire over dialogue.

Later, the pandemic left the streets empty and from

Beijing they cooked up the national security law to put an end to any type of dissent

in the city so that the scenes of 2019 would not be repeated.

Since then, more than a hundred people have been arrested following the entry into force of the new law in July 2020, which punishes with life imprisonment the crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces.

In addition, Beijing established an office in the former colony to be the "guardian of national security in the territory."

It was the first time for Chinese agents to operate openly in Hong Kong.

The first consequences of this law were the prohibition of some slogans and hymns that were popularized in the protests, as well as any reference to independence, under punishment of secession.

Books deemed critical of China were removed

from the shelves of public libraries and schools

.

In May, the Hong Kong Parliament, lacking opposition parties in its seats for the first time, passed a bill that amended local electoral laws, reducing the voting power of the public, while increasing the number of pro-Beijing legislators. .

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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