Day 2 of HK Alliance prosecution opening statement

The HK Alliance trial continues…

Three Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil activists had sought the end of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s rule in the name of “so-called democracy,” prosecutors have argued during a high-profile national security trial.

The court also heard on Tuesday that the prosecution will seek to apply the co-conspirator rule – a legal principle allowing statements by one conspirator to be used against others – in the case against Lee Cheuk-yan, Chow Hang-tung, and the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China.

…Defence lawyers told the court on Tuesday that they only became aware of the prosecution’s intention to apply the co-conspirator rule after the trial had started.

They urged the prosecution to clearly define the scope of the evidence falling within the remit of the legal principle before presenting it in court.

While prosecutors did not elaborate on how the rule would be applied, it is expected that they will argue that remarks by Ho can be used against Lee and Chow.

A quick Google search for ‘co-conspirator rule’ yields the phrase ‘vicariously liable’. Doesn’t sound good.

But don’t worry! From the SCMP…

Hong Kong prosecutors have argued that the national security trial of a now-disbanded alliance behind the Tiananmen Square vigil is neither politically motivated nor intended to punish dissidents, stressing that they will not ask the court to determine the merits of any campaign or criticism against Beijing.

In his opening speech on Monday at West Kowloon Court, Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions Ned Lai Ka-yee said the high-profile case against the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China did not involve adjudication of sensitive political topics, including Beijing’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests in 1989.

According to Lai, the case would instead centre on the defendants’ “persistent” acts to oppose the country’s constitutional order, thereby threatening national security.

‘So-called democracy’. ‘So-called persistent acts’? A whole thesis on the phrase ‘so-called’ is available for download here. From the intro…

Propagandists face a dilemma. They want to discredit political ideas that rival their own, but to do so they often must invoke those very ideas for their readers. This entails a risk: perhaps the reader/listener will become curious and wish to learn more. After all, consumers of authoritarian propaganda can sometimes “read between the lines” to glean information or meanings that the propagandists did not intend to disseminate (Weiss and Dafoe 2019, 964). Including indicators of disapproval in the text is one technique to simultaneously invoke and discredit an idea. In China’s official discourse, one common marker is to place the phrase so-called, in English, or 所谓, in Chinese, before the idea to be discredited.1 Usually, so-called is paired with ironic inverted commas around the relevant phrase to underscore the intended disapproval. For example, journalists Mary Hui and Dan Kopf noted the dramatic rise in the use of so-called in the official language of Hong Kong as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP or party) consolidated political control over the city in 2019 and 2020. The intent, they write, was for the authorities to “undermine information they find objectionable”

Another two of the HK47 get out of prison….

[Fergus] Leung left from Shek Pik Prison on Lantau Island, while [Sam] Cheung left from Stanley Prison, according to local media, with photos showing seven-seater vehicles with their windows drawn departing from the prisons at around 5.38am.

The two councillors both served four years and 11 months in prison, after pleading guilty to taking part in a conspiracy to subvert state power. Leung and Cheung were among 47 figures in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy camp who were prosecuted under the Beijing-imposed legislation. Only two were acquitted.