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Thirteen prominent Hong Kong democracy activists gave the impression in court on Monday accused of organizing an unauthorized rally to mark the crackdown on Tiananmen Square, the latest in a series of accusations from protest leaders at the troubled monetary center.
Last month tens of thousands of Hong Kongers defied a ban on rallies to mark the June 4 anniversary of Beijing’s deadly 1989 crackdown against students pushing for democracy.
The annual vigil has been held in Hong Kong for 3 decades and attracts massive crowds. In recent years, it has acquired a specific importance, as the semi-autonomous city is crashing under Beijing’s increasingly authoritarian regime.
This year’s rally was banned for the first time with the government lifting measures against coronaviruses. At the time, local transmission had been largely interrupted.
But thousands of others came out to hold candles in their neighborhoods and in Victoria Park, the classic vigil.
Police later arrested 13 prominent activists who showed up at the Victoria Park vigil.
All appeared in court on Monday to be formally charged with “inciting” an unlawful assembly, which carries up to five years in jail.
Among them are Jimmy Lai, the millionaire owner of the pro-democracy newspaper Apple, veteran democracy activists like Lee Cheuk-yan and Albert Ho, and young activist Figo Chan.
When asked if he understood the charge, Lee cited the charges of deaths through Chinese tanks and in Tiananmen.
“This is political persecution,” he said. “The real incitement is the bloodbath carried out through the Chinese Communist Party 31 years ago.”
Some of the defendants on Monday – and many other democracy figures – face separate lawsuits similar to last year’s massive and violent pro-democracy protests.
– Liu Xiaobo’s birthday –
Chinese leaders rejected calls to grant universal suffrage to Hong Kong and described the protests as a plot by foreigners to destabilize the homeland.
Earlier this month, Beijing imposed a radical national security with the aim of removing the protests once and for all.
The law aims at subversion, secession, terrorism and foreign collusion, with life sentences.
But its broad formulation – such as the ban on encouraging hatred against the Chinese government – has created concern in a city accustomed to being explicit in what it thinks.
On the continent, national security legislation is used to weigh dissent.
Monday’s court coincided with the third anniversary of the death of Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, the first Nobel Peace Prize winner to die in detention since Nazi Germany.
Liu was arrested in 2009 and charged with “inciting subversion of state power”, dying after cancer.
The defendants in Hong Kong on Monday withheld him before entering court.
Since Beijing’s new law was enacted, police have arrested others for possession of independence or standalone material. Libraries and schools got rid of the books, political parties dissolved and a prominent opposition politician fled.
The law bypassed hong kong’s legislature and its contents were kept secret until its enactment.
This allowed the Chinese security apparatus to blatantly identify itself in the city for the first time, while Beijing also claimed jurisdiction over some serious national security bodies – ending the legal firewall between the mainland and the city’s independent judiciary.
Beijing also announced global jurisdiction to prosecute national security crimes committed through anyone outside Hong Kong and China, adding foreigners.