Anyone expecting a ‘not guilty’ verdict?

For years after 1989, the HK Alliance were free to organize annual Tiananmen vigils, which included calls for an end to one-party rule in China. Then, in 2021, its leaders were arrested and charged with inciting subversion under the NatSec Law. The trial of Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung didn’t start until earlier this year, and the verdict is due today. Maximum sentence: 10 years. AP story…

…prosecutors argued they incited others to use unlawful means to topple China’s fundamental system and central political bodies, including inciting the overthrow of the Communist Party’s leadership through calls for “ending one-party rule,” which was one of the alliance’s core demands.

The defense denied they meant to end the party’s leadership, arguing the slogan was about moving toward democracy and urging the party not to enforce “dictatorship.” It insisted the alliance had not asked people to adopt any illegal means.

…critics consider this case and its result a litmus test of Hong Kong’s civil rights and judicial independence.

The existence of the alliance and the city’s annual vigil have been considered key characteristics of Hong Kong under China’s “one country, two systems” governing framework in the past, said Eric Lai, a senior fellow with the Georgetown Center for Asian Law.

…He noted the charge of inciting subversion was commonly used in mainland China to criminalize the acts of human rights lawyers, activists and intellectuals, including late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo.

“We can see to what extent the court in Hong Kong falls into the level of the party-led judiciary in the mainland through the criminal verdict,” Lai said. 

The Straits Times reports…

Friday’s verdict “will be a significant indicator of how far courts are willing and able to interpret broadly drafted national security offences in a way that is compatible with fundamental rights and freedoms”, Urania Chiu, a law lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, told AFP.

…”So far, in applying the national security law, the courts have arguably prioritised ill-defined national security concerns over other common law and constitutional values,” said Chiu.

HK Labour Rights Monitor asks…

…can advocating an end to one-party rule, without calling for any illegal or violent means, amount to incitement to subvert state power? 

Some history weirdness, via CNN… The Tang – 618-907 AD – were partly Mongol and ruled territory from Korea to what is now Afghanistan. A wacky theory that the dynasty never existed has taken off on China’s Internet, and the government is not pleased.  

It all appears to have started when a history influencer named Qiao Yu deployed some baffling astrological data in a video in May, to “prove” the Tang had never existed. 

The outlandish claim has since spread far and wide. Reports later emerged that people were calling up the tourism bureau in Xi’an, the site of the ancient Tang capital, to demand it close down because the dynasty itself had been shown to be a hoax. 

…The Tang dynasty has been criticized in the past by Chinese nationalists as its founding emperor was not from the Han ethnic group that makes up most of China’s people. The basis of Qiao Yu’s claim is that the succeeding Song dynasty actually began far earlier than traditionally accepted, therefore canceling out the Tang. The Song dynasty was of ethnic Han origin.