HONG KONG—Martin Lee, the eighty two-12 months-old law firm credited with encouraging observed Hong Kong’s democracy movement, and newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai ended up between seven veteran activists observed responsible by a choose on prices associated to a mass demonstration in 2019.
The Thursday responsible verdicts increase the prospect of jail time for a well known group of democracy campaigners who have been combating to maintain the rule of regulation in the previous British colony since right before it was returned to China in the late nineteen nineties. Sentencing on the prices, which can have up to five years’ jail time, was established for afterwards this month.
“We believe we ended up just doing exercises our constitutional legal rights to protest come what may,” said the labor chief Lee Cheuk-yan, a single of the defendants, after the verdict. “It will be a badge of honor for us to go to jail for combating for independence and legal rights for Hong Kong persons.”
The demo is part of a wave of prosecutions below way in Hong Kong as China crushes dissent in the previous British colony. Amid a continuing crackdown that worsened final 12 months when China imposed a sweeping national safety regulation, many of the city’s democracy campaigners are now possibly on demo, in jail or residing in exile.
Just after the choose study out the verdict Thursday, a direct prosecutor identified as on the choose to revoke bail until finally sentencing, indicating the offenses ended up really serious and risked plunging Hong Kong into anarchy by undermining public order. Defendants, however, ended up granted bail but can’t depart Hong Kong.
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