Bangkok – The Hong Kong authorities released four former legislators on Tuesday who each spent more than four years in prison for their part in the staging of an unofficial primary election in 2020, local media reported.
Claudia Mo, Jeremy Tam, Kwok Ka-Ka and Gary Fan were part of 47 activists arrested for electoral activities. Only two of the 47s were acquitted after an exhausting trial of 118 days which ended in November 2024 with prison terms from four to 10 years old.
Vehicles carrying the released activists left three prisons early Tuesday in the midst of close security, the Associated Press reported.
Journalists outside MO’s home were informed by her husband Bowring that she was resting and did not want to speak to them, according to the AFP news agency.
“She is fine and she’s in a good mood,” he said. “We can’t wait to be together again.”
Mo, Tam, Kwok and Fan – who received the shortest sentences of the 47 – their prison time was reduced after pleading guilty.
The group organized the primary 2020 to find the best pro-democracy candidates in the elections of the Hong Kong Legislative Council in September 2020 at a time when Beijing aggressively eroded the autonomy of the territory. More than 600,000 people voted in the preliminary survey.
Carrie Lam, governor of Hong Kong at the time, postponed the elections in 2020, citing health problems due to the Pandemic COVID-19.
The government then rewritten the book of electoral rules to prevent pro-democracy candidates from presenting themselves, finally holding a new election in December 2021 in which only the “patriots” approved by a committee supported by Beijing were authorized to stand.
On January 6, 2021, the newly formed national security police arrested 55 people. They brought official accusations against 47 of them, then refused the bond by majority.
The 47 pro-democracy activists were charged with subversion under the city’s national security law in 2020, an accusation of maximum perpetuity conviction.
The accusation argued that their attempt to win a majority was “a conspiracy” to undermine the city government and take control of the Legislative Council.
The longtime affair has sparked international outrage, with demonstrations by American, British and Australian governments, and the United Nations. The last British colonial governor of Hong Kong, Lord Patten de Barnes, described the case “to face the people of Hong Kong”.
Edited by Tajun Kang and Stephen Wright.