A Hong Kong teenager was ordered to spend four months in prison on Tuesday for insulting China’s national flag and the illegal assembly, as Beijing increasingly targets prominent activists from the financial center. Tony Chung, a 19-year-old who led a now-defunct pro-democracy group, was convicted earlier this month of throwing the Chinese flag to the ground in scuffles outside the Hong Kong legislature in May 2019.
While serving his sentence, Chung is awaiting trial on charges of ‘secession’, which, according to the law, could imprison him for life. draconian national security law Beijing imposed Hong Kong on June 30.
Chung was the first public political figure to be prosecuted under the new security law, which Beijing described as a ‘sword’ to return ‘order and stability’ to the financial center after seven months of massive, often violent pro-democracy protests last year .
He was sentenced to three months each for insulting the national flag and unlawful assembly, and was told to spend four months behind bars.
Kin Cheung / AP
The teen is also facing separate charges of money laundering and conspiracy to publish inflammatory content.
Chung was arrested by plainclothes police in front of the US consulate in late October and has been in custody ever since.
There has been speculation that authorities are moving to Chung hoping to seek asylum at the US consulate in Hong Kong.
An increasing number of pro-democracy activists from across the political spectrum have fled Hong Kong since Beijing stepped up its crackdown on the city’s protests against China’s authoritarian rule.
Under the security law, dissenting statements rather than acts can be claimed for vague but serious crimes such as “subversion” and “collusion with foreign forces”.
The law has also overthrown the legal firewall between Hong Kong’s internationally recognized common law judiciary and the opaque, party-controlled justice system in mainland China by allowing the extradition of suspects across the border for trial.
Last Sunday, Chinese state television CGTN reported that Hong Kong police had placed 30 people who are currently not in Hong Kong on the wanted list for suspected violations of national security law, including self-exiled activists Ted Hui and Baggio Leung.
Prominent activists who remain in Hong Kong have either been jailed, such as Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow, or are regularly arrested and charged multiple times.
Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy media mogul who is also accused of national security law, was placed under house arrest and gutted from public speech – including his Twitter account – when the Hong Kong Supreme Court bailed him last week.
However, the decision drew severe criticism from China, which threatened to extradite Lai to the mainland for trial.