More unjust legal decisions handed down and mitigation statements that point out how they are so

It is looking like we'll never see this sight in Victoria Park ever again :(

 

It's as I had feared: Jimmy Lai, Chow Hang-tung, Gwyneth Ho et al were given prison sentences (as opposed to suspended ones) by judge Amanda Woodcock for their involvement in the candlelight vigil to commemorate the Tiananmen Square Massacre that took place in Victoria Park on June 4th, 2020.  And a Tweet by Goose Lee encapsulated how many of us felt upon learning of the sentencings: "Sickening. Although we're no longer shocked by the Hong Kong court's harsh unfair sentencing of pro-democracy figures, it still hurts every time."

 

The eight defendants who were the final batch who appeared in court for this case involving more than 20 accused pro-democracy politicians and/or activists were handed jail sentences ranging in length from four months and two weeks to 14 months by judge Woodcock.  Interestingly, both the lengthiest (to Lee Cheuk-yan) along with shortest (to Wu Chi-wai) sentences went to individuals who had pleaded guilty; while the three people who had opted to contest the charges against them were handed varying sentences of 13 months (Jimmy Lai), 12 months (Chow Hang-tung) and 6 months (Gwyneth Ho).

 

Of them all, Jimmy Lai must be the one who must feel the most wronged since he didn't even attend the June 4th vigil in question; having just lit a candle at a news conference beforehand -- something he pointed out in his mitigation submission.  In that same statement (which he had handwritten), he also noted the following: "If [commemorating] those who died because of injustice is a crime, then inflict on me that crime & let me suffer the punishment of this crime, so I shall share the burden & glory of those young men & women who shed their blood on June 4th to proclaim truth, justice & goodness."  

 

Chow Hang-tung's mitigation submission (like with Margaret Ng's for a previous case) is one of those "must reads".  The following are a selection of passages from it: 

What has been put on trial here is perhaps the last candlelight vigil in Victoria Park for a long time to come, and definitely the last time that the Hong Kong Alliance could appear in Victoria Park on June 4th now that the Hong Kong Alliance was “killed” by the Government. It is a trial of this 31 years of tradition, this decades-long symbol of resistance that has been forcibly put to an end, first through the present prosecution, then continued through ever-escalating measures by the authorities.

Let us not delude ourselves that this is all about COVID-19 and that the criminalization of the vigil is only an exceptional measure at an exceptional time. What happened here is instead one step in the systemic erasure of history, both of the Tiananmen Massacre and Hong Kong’s own history of civic resistance.

The fact that this case relies heavily on publicly collected evidence that are no longer publicly available, either because the media publishing them had shut down, or the organisation hosting them had been banned, is saying something about the kind of repression and fear that has swept over Hong Kong in a mere one and a half year time. The shrinking, no, the collapse of the space for free expression, association and political action, is a prevalent experience that is every bit as common and as painful, if not more painful, than the COVID-19 situation in this city.

Yet while the Court sees fit to take judicial notice of the situation of a health crisis, it acts as if the parallel political crisis does not exist. It declines to hear any evidence of what “us” as an organisation, as a people, are experiencing in this pandemic of political repression. It refuses to see the wider context under which this case happened, in the name of focusing only on relevant and admissible evidence.

A collective act of some 20,000 people has been branded as “criminal,” yet their [experience] is irrelevant. History is irrelevant. Politics is irrelevant. Views of the purported decision makers matter but not of those commoners who were affected but excluded from the decision-making process. The reality of political repression never stands a chance in court since no evidence of the kind would ever be admissible.

In closing its eyes to the obvious the Court risks making itself irrelevant to the ailments of our times. In purporting to maintain political neutrality the Court is in effect affirming the unequal power wielded by the Government in instituting political charges against its opponents, emboldening the authorities to take over more restrictive action that squeeze out the rights of the citizens.

Throughout the trial the greatest injustice in this case remains hidden and unmentionable, for who are truly responsible for inciting hundreds of thousands of people to gather in Victoria Park on June 4th, years after years? They are the murderers who killed at will in Beijing 32 years ago, with tanks and dumdum guns. Yet the killers were never punished by any court of law, while those who demand truth and accountability were relentlessly criminalised. This has continued non-stop for 32 years in mainland China, and is now also happening in Hong Kong.

Something to note when reading Chow Hang-tung's words: she wrote this mitigation statement while already behind bars and thus without access to a computer, many other research tools and reference materials. Truly, it is a travesty to think that this thoroughly admirable woman of high intelligence, courage and integrity has to spend ANY time in jail at all.  

Amazingly, it seems like Chow Hang-tung's sense of humor has remained intact despite her travails.  For she later opined that: "Actually, I spout too much extraneous rubbish. My whole mitigation can be simply summed up as: Dammit, I won't beg the executioner for mercy! Must change habit of long-windedness"!

 

Meanwhile co-defendant -- and another heroic woman of high intelligence, courage and intregity -- Gwyneth Ho really did opt for a mitigation statement that was brief and to the point: "You can pile up all the legal language you want; it doesn’t matter: My sentence today is the sentence for every single HongKonger who appeared in Victoria Park on June 4, 2020."  Of which there were a good number, and would have been greater if not for many people (including myself) heeding the calls of the likes of Lee Cheuk-yan to light candles in every part of Hong Kong that evening (rather than only Victoria Park, as previously would have been the case).