No time limit for trials on Hong Kong demonstrations in 2019

Five years now since the pro-democracy protests out of 10,279 people arrested only 28.8% have been remanded for trial. But for Justice Secretary Chris Tang, ‘the authorities must be given time to gather evidence’. Chow Hang-tung's request to call people living abroad to testify on video at the trial was rejected.

Hong Kong (AsiaNews) - There is no time limit to try the more than 7,000 people arrested in connection with the 2019 protests in Hong Kong for whom charges have not yet been laid.

Claiming this is Local Government Security Secretary Chris Tang, who says it would be unfair to wait for trial for more than five years because the authorities need time to gather evidence. This stance came after Justice Secretary Paul Lam told the Sing Tao newspaper in recent days that there is no statute of limitations for criminal cases in Hong Kong.

From 9 June 2019 - when Hongkongers 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 this year, 10,279 people were arrested in connection with the protests.

The figure was provided by the police themselves in June, in response to a query from the Hong Kong Free Press website: of those arrested, 7,537 were male and 2,742 female. Ages ranged from 11 to 87, with 1,754 under the age of 18.

As of 31 March, a total of 2,961 people - only 28.8 per cent of those arrested - had ‘undergone or were undergoing legal proceedings’, i.e. their cases had been heard by the courts or there was a trial already set. Speaking to journalists, Tam rejected the proposal to set a deadline for the indictment of those arrested 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 removed, had turned into sometimes violent demonstrations of dissent against police behaviour, amid calls for democracy and anger at the crackdown imposed by Beijing. The protesters had demanded an independent investigation into police conduct, amnesty for those arrested and an end to the classification of the protests as ‘riots’.

In Hong Kong, the time limits for prosecuting summary offences, which are of a less serious nature and concern cases such as littering and careless driving, are generally set at six months from the date of the incident. For more serious offences, on the other hand, there is no set time limit for prosecution.

Meanwhile, yesterday in one of the most important pro-democracy protests scheduled to start in May - the one against the organisers of the 4 June vigils in memory of the Tianamen Square streets - a Hong Kong court denied activist Chow Hang-tung the opportunity to listen to witnesses indicated by the defence remotely from abroad.

Streaming testimony is a procedure routinely adopted in local courts, but in this case it was ruled inadmissible under the National Security Act. Chow told the court that he intended to call five people to testify: American political science professor Larry Diamond; the artist who made a famous statue of the Tiananmen crackdown, Jens Galshiot; and Chinese activists Fang Zheng, Zhou Fengsuo and Wu'erkaixi. With the exception of Diamond, all had previously been denied entry to Hong Kong.

Photo: Flickr / Studio Incendo