HONG KONG—Martin Lee, the eighty two-calendar year-old lawyer credited with encouraging discovered Hong Kong’s democracy movement, and newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai ended up among the 7 veteran activists discovered responsible by a choose on costs relevant to a mass demonstration in 2019.
The Thursday responsible verdicts raise the prospect of jail time for a well known team of democracy campaigners who have been fighting to protect the rule of legislation in the former British colony due to the fact ahead of it was returned to China in the late 1990s. Sentencing on the costs, which can have up to 5 years’ jail time, was established for later on this month.
“We think we ended up just training our constitutional legal rights to protest appear what may possibly,” mentioned the labor leader Lee Cheuk-yan, one of the defendants, after the verdict. “It will be a badge of honor for us to go to jail for fighting for flexibility and legal rights for Hong Kong folks.”
The trial is part of a wave of prosecutions under way in Hong Kong as China crushes dissent in the former British colony. Amid a continuing crackdown that worsened last calendar year when China imposed a sweeping nationwide protection legislation, numerous of the city’s democracy campaigners are now possibly on trial, in jail or residing in exile.
Immediately after the choose study out the verdict Thursday, a lead prosecutor termed on the choose to revoke bail right until sentencing, expressing the offenses ended up critical and risked plunging Hong Kong into anarchy by undermining community order. Defendants, even so, ended up granted bail but can’t depart Hong Kong.