On July 1, 2021, a man stabbed and wounded a police officer in a busy shopping district before taking his own life in what authorities called an act of "domestic terrorism".
Several days later, a student union council at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) -- including the chairman and three members -- passed a motion to mourn the attacker, and to "appreciate his sacrifice for Hong Kong".
The four students -- Kinson Cheung, Kwok Wing-ho, Chris Todorovski and Yung Chung-hei -- were initially charged with "inciting terrorism" under the sweeping national security law Beijing imposed on the financial hub after the 2019 protests.
The former students, now aged 21 and 22, pleaded guilty to the alternative charge of "inciting others to wound police officers" -- which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison -- and district judge Adriana Tse Ching sentenced them to 24 months in jail.
She said the group had not only openly defied laws and targeted police officers, but also used the student union council as a platform to "glorify the incident".
"The Defendants were abusing their powers as members of the Executive Committee," said the judgement.
The fact that their meeting attracted widespread local and international news coverage was also an aggravating factor, according to the judge.
During the council meeting -- broadcast live on the social media accounts of campus media -- the students expressed respect for Leung's act and criticised the government's characterisation of it as terrorism.
Defendant Kwok Wing-ho -- who was then HKU's student union president and had called the attacker a "martyr" -- told the court that the public sympathised with Leung after the police crackdown on the 2019 protests.
"The clashes between police and civilians have brought Hong Kong indelible trauma," Kwok wrote in his mitigation letter to the court.
"Although society has resumed peacefulness, the trauma has not healed... I can't betray my conscience to say that after two years I have changed from resenting the police to supporting them."
Hong Kong's main pro-democracy party shut out of local elections
Hong Kong (AFP) Oct 30, 2023 -
No candidates from Hong Kong's main pro-democracy party will be allowed to contest upcoming local elections, the party said, after a new, Beijing-backed nomination process closed on Monday.
Pro-democracy parties won the last district council elections in 2019 in a landslide, with the polls held at the peak of massive and at times violent protests calling for greater political freedoms.
Since then, Beijing has moved to quell dissent in the city, imposing a national security law and overhauling the electoral process in a way that allows it to weed out those considered disloyal to the Chinese government.
The revamp, announced in May, slashed the number of directly elected seats in the district council from 452 to 88, with the government saying the move was meant to "exclude anti-China and destabilising forces".
The remaining seats are controlled by the city's leader, government loyalists and rural landlords.
To stand for the 88 directly elected seats, candidates must undergo a strict two-week nomination process and receive the approval of at least nine members of three government-appointed committees within their constituency.
Critics, including the United States and European Union, see the revamp as further consolidating Beijing's authoritarian grip on the city.
By Monday evening, the Democratic Party -- the oldest and largest group in the pro-democracy camp -- said all six of their candidates had "failed to secure sufficient nominations".
"Although some candidates received nominations from some of the three committees' members, they couldn't meet the requirement," said chairperson Lo Kin-hei.
Of the 172 candidates who have applied to take part in December's elections, more than 70 percent were themselves members of the three committees, according to a tally kept by AFP.
- 'Refused to listen' -
More than a quarter of the candidates who successfully entered to stand in December's direct elections were from DAB, Hong Kong's largest pro-Beijing party, which declined to disclose how many of its party members were in the committees.
Some centrist and pro-government groups, however, said they also faced difficulty getting their candidates past the committees.
The Third Side, a small centrist group founded by serving legislator Tik Chi-yuen, withdrew from the process last Friday, saying it was impossible for its two candidates to secure nominations.
Pro-government groups Path of Democracy and RoundTable both saw only one of their candidates pass muster at the nomination stage.
RoundTable founder Michael Tien criticised nomination committee members, saying some "refused to even listen to us".
Path of Democracy leader Ronny Tong questioned whether the committees had been given too large a task.
"I believe it's also very difficult for the three committees' members... especially when this is the first election (after the overhaul)," Tong told AFP.
- 'Scale is tilted' -
Kwok Wai-shing, a candidate with small pro-democracy party ADPL, said he has not been able to get any nominators to support him.
"The system is asking me to get nominations from my rivals, would they do that?" he said. "The scale is tilted and people can see that clearly."
City leader John Lee last week defended the election's "openness and fairness".
"The candidates (who haven't got any nominations) should study themselves and find out their problems," Lee said, adding that nominators had to consider if a candidate is "someone who loves China and Hong Kong".
In 2021, more than 300 directly elected district council members resigned or were unseated by the government after the authorities demanded that they pledge loyalty to Beijing.
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