As the massive trial of the “Hong Kong 47” democracy campaigners ended yesterday, an acquitted member of the group watched from the sidelines and felt the weight of his freedom upon him.
Former district councilor and street dancer Lee Yue-shun (李宇信) is one of only two people to have walked away from a National Security Law trial.
Forty-five of his codefendants were handed prison terms of up to 10 years for subversion.
Photo: Bloomberg
“I find the situation [of being acquitted] quite hard to understand,” Lee told Agence France-Presse in a series of interviews ahead of the sentencing.
“I think [the acquittal] gave me more responsibility — how can I make better use of the freedom I have not lost,” the 31-year-old added.
Lee yesterday arrived outside court at 4am to try and get a public seat.
“I come here today mainly [out of] a duty to show my concern for this important court case as a citizen,” he said. “I also want more people to notice the development and the conclusion of the case.”
The 47 were charged after holding an unofficial election primary in July 2020, in a bid to make a shortlist aimed at gaining a pro-democracy majority in the legislature.
If victorious, they planned to force the government to meet the 2019 protesters’ demands — including universal suffrage — by threatening vetoes of the territory’s budget. Judges ruled they would have created “a constitutional crisis” and 45 were convicted of subversion.
However, Lee and another defendant, veteran lawyer Lawrence Lau (劉偉聰), were acquitted. Judges said they could not be sure Lee “was a party to the Scheme” nor that he “had the intention to subvert.”
Until the duo’s release in May, national security cases prosecuted under the 2020 law had a 100 percent conviction rate. While Hong Kong’s legislature has been purged of opposition and scores of civil society groups have shuttered since the law’s passage, authorities maintain it restored order and stability after months of unrest.
“We have lost a lot of freedoms... All I can say is that the acquittal means I lost one less,” Lee said.
Lee jokingly referred to himself as “a loser” — he struggled at school and failed to get into university first time round.
“But Hong Kong gave me a vision,” he said, and he decided to pursue a career as a social worker.
He first dipped his toes into politics as a student, working as a campaign helper for a pro-democracy party. Lee soon caught the party’s eye as a candidate to attract young voters, and ran for district council at the height of the 2019 protests. He was put forward in the election primary almost at the last minute. He lost, but at dawn on Jan. 6, 2021, was awakened by banging on his door.
It was the national security police.
“I couldn’t make sense of it at that time. I asked if many people were arrested. They said yes,” Lee recalled.
Lee was luckier than the others — he was granted bail after two weeks, whereas most of the 47 have been detained since that day. Even so, stringent bail conditions kept him “trapped” in Hong Kong for nearly 1,200 days. His passport was seized, and he was banned from speaking publicly in any way deemed to endanger national security.
“Over these three years — which I would describe as a test — I had been emphasizing this: I would not let my life be destroyed,” Lee said.
“Until the last moment before the ruling, I had been thinking: ‘Come what may, there are still things I want to carry on,’” he said.
Lee threw himself into street dance and boxing, and appeared at every trial day in carefully coordinated outfits. He also completed a law program, with his final thesis analyzing the conspiracy charge in common law — using his own case as an example.
Two weeks after his acquittal, Lee retrieved his passport from the court, and in early July, he renewed his social worker license.
“I will now make more active and better use of this basic right [of movement] to further develop myself... to encourage more and different people here,” he said.
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