In Hong Kong, where almost 300 people including Australian Gordon Ng have been arrested on national security grounds since the introduction of draconian security laws in 2020, wearing the wrong T-shirt can land you in jail.
What in the World, a free weekly newsletter from our foreign correspondents, is sent every Thursday. Below is an excerpt. Sign up to get the whole newsletterThere has been more unsettling news out of Hong Kong, where Beijing’s strangulation of political dissent has been paraded through the court system with frequency this year.
His crime was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” and a yellow mask printed with “FDNOL” – short for “five demands, not one less”. Both slogans were frequently used during the massive, and at times violent,Chu is facing up to 10 years in jail, and has already spent three months in prison this year for a separate conviction for wearing a T-shirt with the same slogan under a colonial-era sedition law that had been revived by authorities.
He is facing a possible maximum life sentence for what prosecutors claim was his organising role in an unofficial primary election held in July 2020 that aimed to help pro-democracy candidates win majority control of the Hong Kong legislature and veto government bills. His case is part of the “”, named for the group of politicians and activists charged with conspiring to “subvert state power”, in what stands as the biggest prosecution under the new law to date.
“Because ‘power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely’, I believe that the holding of fair and regular elections provides the best counterbalance against a power potentially becoming tyrannical,” he said.
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