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    Dozens of Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Leaders Sentenced in Mass Trial

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    The 45 defendants, including Joshua Wong, were at the forefront of the opposition movement crushed by Beijing. Many have already been in jail for years.A Hong Kong court on Tuesday sentenced 45 former politicians and activists in a mass trial that has decimated the city’s once vibrant pro-democracy opposition and served as a warning that resistance to Beijing can be costly.The landmark trial is the most forceful use of a national security law Beijing imposed on Hong Kong in 2020 in response to months of large protests against Chinese rule. The prosecution of the activists, the vanguard of Hong Kong’s opposition, has delivered what experts described as a knockout blow to hopes for democracy in the city.Their offense, according to the authorities: holding or taking part in an unofficial primary election.In one fell swoop in 2021, the authorities arrested Benny Tai, 60, a legal scholar and opposition strategist; Joshua Wong, 28, a prominent pro-democracy activist; and dozens of others, including veteran former lawmakers and younger politicians who called for self-determination for Hong Kong. Mr. Tai was sentenced on Tuesday to 10 years in prison. Several opposition politicians and activists, including Au Nok Hin, Andrew Chiu and Ben Chung, were handed terms of around six and seven years each. Mr. Wong was given a sentence of about four years and eight months.The trial made clear that any form of dissent or criticism, however moderate, carried significant risk, analysts said. “If you are being critical of the authorities both in Hong Kong and in China, then it’s open season,” Steve Tsang, a Hong Kong-born political scientist and director of the SOAS China Institute in London, said in an interview.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hong Kong to Rule on Democrats in Largest National Security Trial

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      Forty-seven pro-democracy activists face prison time for holding a primary election as Beijing cracks down on even peaceful political opposition.A Hong Kong court will begin issuing verdicts on Thursday in the city’s largest national security trial, as the authorities use sweeping powers imposed by Beijing to quash political dissent in the Chinese territory.The 47 pro-democracy activists and opposition leaders in the trial — including Benny Tai, a former law professor, and Joshua Wong, a protest leader and founder of a student group — face prison sentences, in some cases for perhaps as long as life. Their offense: holding a primary election to improve their chances in citywide polls.Most of the defendants have spent at least the last three years in detention ahead of and during the 118-day trial. On Thursday, judges picked by Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leader were set to start handing down verdicts on 16 of them who had pleaded not guilty. Those who are convicted will be sentenced later, along with 31 others who had entered guilty pleas.The expected convictions and the sentences to follow would effectively turn the vanguard of the city’s opposition, a hallmark of its once-vibrant political scene, into a generation of political prisoners. Some are former lawmakers who joined politics after Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule by the British in 1997. Others are activists and legislators who have advocated self-determination for Hong Kong with more confrontational tactics. Several, like Mr. Wong, who rose to fame as a bespectacled teenage activist, were among the students leading large street occupations for the right to vote in 2014.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More