On the upper floors of the West Kowloon courthouse, in the last row of the very modern No. 3 court, Cardinal Zen, 90, is again in the dock on Tuesday 1er november. He fights against the fatigue of the endless hearings of this new trial. The old clergyman, the most famous man of the Church in Hong Kong, is surrounded by his four co-accused.
Standing side by side are famed human rights lawyer and former MP Margaret Ng, 74, with cropped gray hair and black round glasses, former MP Cyd Ho, 68, recently released from prison, the prominent sociologist Hui Po-keung, 62, who was arrested at the airport in May as he prepared to take up a new university post in Italy, and canto-pop star and LGBT community icon Denise Ho , 45, one of the few artists to have dared to publicly commit to the pro-democracy movement.
They are separated from the main magistrate Ada Yim by a few rows of offices occupied by lawyers, prosecutors, clerks, and as many anti-Covid Plexiglas screens. Their trial, which is coming to an end, concerns the status of the “612 Fund”, a humanitarian fund of which they are the five co-administrators, created to financially support the demonstrators arrested during the summer of 2019. “612” refers to June 12 2019, date of the first violent clashes with the police. Demonstrations, at first peaceful, against a bill for extradition to China which had turned into anti-government riots. In total, more than 10,000 arrests had taken place.
Half-century-old colonial laws
Inaugurated in 2016, the huge courthouse in West Kowloon is nicknamed the “mega-court”. At the time, the government was keen to facilitate public and media access to important trials and to provide the justice of the special administrative region with the means to match its reputation. This justice, independent of the Chinese system, based on common law (the legal system that prevails in Anglo-Saxon countries) and rendered by local and international judges, was the main pillar of Hong Kong’s excellent international reputation. No one then imagined the role that would be entrusted to him a few years later.
Since June 2020 and the entry into force of the National Security Law (LSN) imposed by Beijing, the judicial system and the mission of the courts have been completely transformed. The crimes of secession, subversion, terrorism and conspiracy with foreign forces, brought back into force, now lead to sentences of up to life: the government has dusted off old colonial laws more than half a century old, especially antisedition, which suddenly turn out to be very useful. The current political reform of the special administrative region is passing, silently and with a veneer of legality, through the courts.
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