‘We refuse to disappear’: the Hong Kong 47 facing life in jail after crackdown

The verdict wasn’t surprising but outside room no 2 of the West Kowloon courthouse, people still wept. The panel of Hong Kong national security judges had set down two days for the hearing but dispensed with the core business in about 15 minutes. In the city’s largest ever national security trial – involving the prosecution of pro-democracy campaigners and activists from a group known as the “Hong Kong 47” – almost all the defendants were found guilty of conspiracy to commit subversion.

Their crime was trying to win an election, holding unofficial primaries in 2020 attended by an estimated 600,000 residents.

The plan was devised by organiser and academic Benny Tai, who had previously been jailed over his involvement in the 2014 “umbrella movement”, and whom Beijing has labelled a “vicious traitor”. Tai’s plan began with primaries to select the best candidates to win a legislative majority. They would then block government budgets to potentially force a dissolution and the resignation of the chief executive, Carrie Lam, in an effort to have the government answer the movement’s demands.