By South China Morning Post | Created at 2024-11-18 05:21:37 | Updated at 2024-11-18 07:28:49
2 hours ago
A Hong Kong court is set to sentence 45 former opposition politicians and activists on Tuesday for conspiring to subvert state power through an unofficial legislative primary election four years ago, with dozens of residents queuing up for public gallery seats days in advance as police secured the area.
Officers have stepped up presence around West Kowloon Law Courts Building since the weekend, setting up wedge barriers and cordoning off pathways as they get ready for the final act of the city’s biggest and longest-running prosecution under the Beijing-decreed national security law.
The 45 were from a group of 47 opposition figures who were jointly charged with conspiracy to commit subversion over an attempt to win a controlling majority in the Legislative Council through the 2020 primary in the hope of forcing the government to give in to protesters’ demands by indiscriminately voting down its budgets.
Thirty-one defendants, including former law professor Benny Tai Yiu-ting, the unofficial poll’s initiator, and three organisers, pleaded guilty to the charge before another 14 were convicted in May this year after a 118-day trial spanning 16 months.
A queue for seats in the public gallery snaked from a corner of the court building in Cheung Sha Wan as early as Saturday.
The Post found at least 26 people waiting in line on Monday morning, with dozens of empty seats believed to be marked for a spot. Some appeared to have spent overnight on the street as they geared up with cardboard boxes filled with food supplies and personal items.
