The trial of nine prominent democracy activists began today in Hong Kong. Among them are the politician Martin Lee and the well-known media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai. The defendants are accused of organizing one of the largest demonstrations in the Chinese Special Administrative Region in 2019 and facing up to five years in prison.
The 82-year-old lawyer Martin Lee is the founding chairman of Hong Kong’s first political party and is known in the Chinese special administrative region as the „father of democracy“. He was once chosen by Beijing to help draft the Hong Kong constitution.
Jimmy Lai, on the other hand, is the owner of the pro-democracy tabloid „Apple Daily“ and is considered one of the most important critics of the central government in Beijing. 73-year-old lawyer Margaret Ng is a former opposition MP. Other defendants include senior members of the Civil Human Rights Front, which organized a series of mass protests in 2019.
Decades of struggle for direct elections
Most of the defendants fought peacefully for decades to get direct general election in Hong Kong. At the start of the trial, which is expected to take ten days, seven of the nine defendants pleaded not guilty.
According to estimates by the organizers, 1.7 million people took part in the demonstration on August 18, 2019 – almost a quarter of all Hong Kong residents. An independent check of the number of participants was hardly possible.
In Hong Kong, the authorities have been using all their might against the democracy movement for some time. They rely on the so-called security law, which has severely restricted civil rights in Hong Kong since last year.
