Lawfare in Hong Kong and exile to escape it

  

Hong Kong's outlook often feels more cloudy, and 

darkening by the day, these days :(

 

There are so many court cases involving political prisoners in Hong Kong these days.  Yesterday saw Jimmy Sham appear before High Court judge Esther Toh once again for a bail hearing -- and saw him denied bail one more time by her.  Wednesday (tomorrow) will see Claudia Mo, another of the 47 pro-democracy camp politicians and activists charged with subversion for having organized or participated in last July's primary elections appear for her bail hearing before the same judge.  

 

And Friday will see the sentencing of the seven veteran pro-democracy leaders (including the likes of lawyers Martin Lee and Margaret Ng, and media mogul Jimmy Lai) found guilty of having organized and/or participated in the August 18th, 2019, unauthorized protest march that was lauded at the time for being peaceful in nature.  (It's still three days away but I'm already majorly dreading what that day will have in store.)

 

Today's headline legal news involved Joshua Wong -- who, lest we forget, is currently serving a 13 and half month jail sentence -- being sentenced to another four months in prison after pleading guilty to joining an unauthorised assembly on October 5th, 2019, and violating the anti-mask law he was protesting against.  In addition, veteran pro-democracy campaigner Koo Sze-yiu -- who's been imprisoned on 10 different occasions already -- Koo Sze-yiu, was found guilty and sentenced to five months in prison for his part in the same anti-mask protest.  

 

As it so happens, 75-year-old Mr Koo was just released from prison last week after serving time for desecrating the Chinese national flag.  At his previous trial, it was learnt that he has stage four rectal cancer and that he had told the presiding magistrate: "Don’t sympathise with me, don’t pity me, don’t be kind to me, because I won’t be kind to the Chinese government"; and, sadly, the two judges he's most recently come up before have indeed not done so.     

 

Today also saw the jailing of a 60-something retiree for three and a half years for throwing petrol bombs at a police residential quarters in Sheung Shui last year.  His lawyers had told the court that he had done this because he was disturbed by the clashes between police and protesters since 2019 and wanted to show he was on the side of young people. 

 

It has been reported that over 10,200 people have been arrested over the protests that began back in March 2019 with a peaceful, authorized march involving some 12,000 people.  Looking at the Hong Kong Free Press' photo-essay of that event, it's shocking to see how many of the faces in that crowd are now behind bars -- and one must think that bookseller Lam Wing-kee is by no means the only person who was there that day who now is in exile.     

In recent days, confirmation has been received of former legal sector lawmaker Dennis Kwok having moved to Canada with his family and Joshua Wong's former Demosisto colleague, Nathan Law, having been granted asylum by the United Kingdom.  And for confirmation that ordinary Hong Kongers too are leaving Hong Kong, check out this moving video by camera gear reviewer Lok Cheung, who I thought was going to tear up at the end of the video when he bade Hong Kongers ga yau, and sure did make me do so.