HK turns the page on troubled chapter as national security case concludes

With tough new law discouraging activism, focus turns to bread-and-butter concerns

- Lin Suling

With 45 political activists sentenced on Nov 19 for subversion, Hong Kong hopes to turn the page on a troubled political phase, amid growing bread-and-butter preoccupations.

In the years leading up to and immediately after the city was mired in months-long anti-government protests in 2019, Hong Kong politics had been turbocharged, framed as a tussle between local reformists and Beijing-backed lawmakers.

But with the passing of a national security law, the detention of some activists and the self-exile of many others after the protests, the political mood in the city is calmer.

Under way, meanwhile, is a permanent shift in the city's political landscape as new laws undergird a new political compact.

The landmark case is seen as a litmus test of the national security law enacted in June 2020 in response to the 2019 protests and which criminalises acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with external forces.

In 2021, 47 people were arrested for carrying out an unauthorised primary election in July 2020 to choose opposition candidates for Hong Kong's Legislative Council (LegCo) elections and charged with subversion.

Among the sentenced were icons of the 2014 Hong Kong protests Joshua Wong and legal scholar Benny Tai, opposition lawmakers Claudia Mo, Helena Wong, Kwok Ka Ki and Leung Kwok Hung, as well as Ventus Lau and Owen Chow, who had also been involved in the storming and spray-painting of the LegCo in 2019.

This week, they were handed jail sentences ranging from four years and two months to 10 years for conspiring to seize control of the LegCo and planning to veto the city budget to paralyse government functions unless the five demands of protesters in 2019 were agreed to.

The offence of subversion carries a maximum sentence of lifetime imprisonment.