HONG KONG No time limit on trials over 2019 Hong Kong protests

Five years after the pro-democracy protests, of the 10,279 people arrested, only 28.8% have been charged. But according to Justice Secretary Chris Tang, “authorities must be given time to gather evidence.” Chow Hang-tung’s request to summon people living abroad to testify by video at the trial was rejected.

Hong Kong () – There is no time limit for trying the more than 7,000 people arrested in connection with the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, for whom no charges have yet been brought. The Secretary of Security of the local government, Chris Tang, supports this statement and considers that it is not unfair to wait more than five years for the trial because the authorities need time to gather evidence. Justice Secretary Paul Lam had already told the newspaper Sing Tao For a few days now criminal cases in Hong Kong have no statute of limitations.

Since June 9, 2019, when Hong Kongers took to the streets to oppose a proposed amendment to an extradition law that would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent to China, until March of this year, 10,279 people were arrested in connection with the protests. The data was provided in June by the same police, in response to a question from the Hong Kong Free Press portal: of those detained, 7,537 were men and 2,742 women. Ages ranged from 11 to 87 years, with 1,754 under 18 years of age.

As of March 31, a total of 2,961 people – just 28.8% of those detained – had “been tried or had judicial proceedings in progress”, meaning their cases had already been examined by the courts or trial. It had a date. Speaking to reporters, Tam rejected the possibility of setting a deadline for filing charges against those detained in connection with the 2019 protests, saying it would be a measure “contrary to the principle of the rule of law.”

The protests that broke out in June 2019 over the extradition bill, which was later withdrawn, had turned into sometimes violent demonstrations of dissent against police behavior, amid calls for democracy and anger sparked by repression. imposed by Beijing. Protesters had called for an independent investigation into police conduct, an amnesty for those arrested and for the protests not to be characterized as “riots.”

In Hong Kong, the deadlines for processing summary offences, which are less serious in nature and include cases such as littering and reckless driving, are usually set within six months from the date of the offence. But in the case of the most serious crimes there is no established deadline to initiate criminal action.

Meanwhile yesterday, in one of the most important trials on the pro-democracy protests that are due to begin in May – against the organizers of the June 4 vigils, in memory of the Tianamen Square massacre – a Hong Kong court denied the activist Chow Hang-tung the possibility of listening remotely from abroad to some witnesses presented by the defense. The testimony in streaming It is a procedure commonly adopted in local courts, but in this case it was excluded because it was considered not admissible under the National Security Law. Chow told the court that he intended to subpoena five people to testify: American political science professor Larry Diamond; the artist who created a famous statue of the Tiananmen crackdown, Jens Galshiot; and Chinese activists Fang Zheng, Zhou Fengsuo and Wu’erkaixi. Except for Diamond, all of them had previously been denied entry to Hong Kong.

Photo: Flickr / Studio Incendo