Hong Kong dissidents back in court for marathon bail hearing

Dozens of Hong Kong democracy activists charged with subversion are due back in court on Tuesday to complete a marathon bail hearing that was adjourned overnight when four defendants were rushed to hospital after hours of legal wrangling.

Police arrested 47 of the city’s best known dissidents on Sunday for “conspiracy to commit subversion” in the broadest use yet of a sweeping national security law that Beijing imposed on the city last year.

The defendants represent a broad cross-section of Hong Kong’s opposition, from veteran former pro-democracy lawmakers to academics, lawyers, social workers and youth activists.

Hundreds of supporters gathered outside a courthouse on Monday for the first post-charge bail hearing, chanting democracy slogans — a rare resurgence of defiance in a city where protest has been all but outlawed over the last year.

Normally such a bail hearing might take little more than a couple of hours.

But the court struggled to deal with the sheer caseload as well as the legal vagaries of the broadly-worded security law, which removes the presumption of bail for non-violent crimes.

The court sat on and off for some 15 hours throughout Monday as the prosecution called for the activists to be held in custody until the next hearing in three months’ time while the defence tried to pursue bail.

An adjournment only came in the small hours of Tuesday morning after one of the defendants, Clarisse Yeung, collapsed and was rushed to hospital. Three other defendants were subsequently taken to hospital in ambulances.

At the time of the adjournment, less than half of the bail hearings for the 47 defendants had been heard, an AFP reporter in court said.

The hearing is expected to resume later on Tuesday morning.

High bar for bail

Beijing is struggling to quash dissent in semi-autonomous Hong Kong after huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy demonstrations in 2019.

The security law has been the spear tip of that crackdown, criminalising any act considered to be subversion, secession, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces.

It has radically transformed semi-autonomous Hong Kong’s relationship with the authoritarian mainland and outlawed much dissent in the once free-wheeling finance hub.

One major area of change is bail.

Under the new law, defendants may only be granted bail if they can persuade a court they no longer pose any kind of national security risk.

Before Monday’s hearing, all those charged with a national security crime have been held on remand, despite agreeing to restrictive measures like house arrest and making no public statements.

The alleged offence for the 47 facing subversion charges was organising an unofficial primary election last summer to choose candidates for the city’s legislature, in the hopes that the pro-democracy bloc might take a majority and block government legislation.

Chinese and Hong Kong officials said this was an attempt to “overthrow” the city’s government, and therefore a threat to national security.

Critics, including many western powers, have accused China of effectively outlawing opposition politics and shredding the freedoms and autonomy it promised Hong Kong could maintain ahead of the territory’s handover from the British.

“This trial has nothing to do with law, it merely shows how the Chinese Communist party nakedly abuses its powers and uses the courts to demonstrate that power,” Nathan Law, a Hong Kong democracy activist who fled to Britain, said on Facebook Tuesday.

Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said the subversion charges were being brought against people “who sought peaceful change through the democratic process”.

China has dismissed criticism of its Hong Kong crackdown, saying it must restore stability after 2019’s protests and ensure only “staunch patriots” are allowed to run Hong Kong.

– AFP