The ICAC – founded in the 1970s to tackle corruption in the government – arrests three people in their 50s and 60s for sharing online posts allegedly urging a boycott of the LegCo election.
There is no law against boycotting the election. Could it be that warnings against ‘inciting others not to vote’ – and arrests like this – do more to publicize the idea of boycotting than any number of posts by activists in exile?
During Jimmy Lai’s trial for sedition, prosecutors cited 161 Apple Daily articles as evidence. In his attempt to sue Ta Kung Pao for libel, the judge rejects his request to submit 101 items from that paper…
In a judgment handed down on Friday, Chief District Judge Justin Ko rejected Lai’s application to enter the articles as evidence.
Lai included quotes from the articles, but Ta Kung Pao’s lawyers said that his legal team did not explain how the articles could substantiate the libel claims, the judge said.
“In my view, the proposed amendments are confusing, embarrassing and defective,” Ko said.
Judge Ko accepted Senior Counsel Rimsky Yuen’s argument that his client, Ta Kung Pao, would be “completely blindsided at trial” if Lai’s application were granted.
“Unless proper particulars… are provided, [Ta Kung Pao] will be forced to shadow-box on the issue of malice,” Ko said in his judgment.
Lai, 77, had previously only relied on one Ta Kung Pao article published in June 2020, which suggested that Lai was planning to “abscond” from the city via illegal means and breach bail terms imposed by the court.
The article was headlined “Leaders who create chaos in Hong Kong plotting escape, escape route exposed, charge one million dollars”.
…Last year, Lai was denied a jury trial in the libel suit, with Justice Queeny Au-Yeung saying that such an arrangement was inappropriate as it would involve “prolonged examination of documents.”
China Media Project looks at the tradition of ‘literary persecution’ in China…
Contemporary observers of China might readily see echoes of imperial literary inquisition in the actions of the Chinese Communist Party leadership today. In recent years, writer and blogger Yang Hengjun (杨恒均) was sentenced to a suspended death sentence in 2024 for espionage after years of detention, while citizen journalist Zhang Zhan (张展) received four years for her COVID-19 reporting from Wuhan. Legal scholar Xu Zhiyong (许志永) and activist Ding Jiaxi (丁家喜) were sentenced to 14 and 12 years respectively in 2023 for “subversion of state power” after organizing informal gatherings to discuss governance. Publisher Geng Xiaonan (耿潇男) received five years in prison in 2024 for “illegal business operations” related to publishing books critical of the government.
such an arrangement was inappropriate as it would involve “prolonged examination of documents.”
WTF does the woman think trials are for? The comment suggest that she is not qualified to be employed in ANY capacity in the legal industry.