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COURTS✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Hong Kong sentences Tiananmen activists to between 5 and 7 years in prison
Filed 1h ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk
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Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
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A Hong Kong court sentenced three former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance, Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho and Chow Hang-tung, to between five and seven years in prison for national security crimes tied to organizing Tiananmen anniversary vigils. The court found the case involved no violence and no specific timetable for change, but ruled their call to ‘end one-party dictatorship’ was still serious enough to warrant the sentences.
The verdict drew condemnation from the UN human rights chief, the European Union, Taiwan and Human Rights Watch, while Hong Kong's leader defended the ruling as necessary against those using rights and democracy as a ‘pretext’ to harm the country. Prosecutors are also seeking confiscation of a Tiananmen memorial statue, the ‘Pillar of Shame,’ whose creator called the move outrageous.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
A government that needs a national security law to prosecute people for holding a candlelight vigil is telling you plainly how confident it feels about its own version of history. The court itself admitted there was no violence and no plan, then handed out years in prison anyway, which is a strange way to demonstrate strength. Locking up the people who lit candles and going after the statue too suggests the fear isn't of an uprising, it's of a memory.
