HONG KONG – Dozens of Hong Kong democracy activists charged with subversion are due back in court today to complete a marathon bail hearing that was adjourned overnight when four defendants were rushed to hospital after hours of legal wrangling.
Police arrested 47 of the city’s best known dissidents on Sunday for “conspiracy to commit subversion” in the broadest use yet of a sweeping national security law that Beijing imposed on the city last year.
The defendants represent a broad cross-section of Hong Kong’s opposition, from veteran former pro-democracy lawmakers to academics, lawyers, social workers, and youth activists.
Hundreds of supporters gathered outside a courthouse yesterday for the first post-charge bail hearing, chanting democracy slogans – a rare resurgence of defiance in a city where protest has been all but outlawed over the last year.
Normally such a bail hearing might take little more than a couple of hours.
But the court struggled to deal with the sheer caseload as well as the legal vagaries of the broadly worded security law, which removes the presumption of bail for non-violent crimes.
The court sat on and off for some 15 hours throughout yesterday as the prosecution called for the activists to be held in custody until the next hearing in three months’ time while the defence tried to pursue bail.
An adjournment only came in the small hours of this morning after one of the defendants, Clarisse Yeung, collapsed and was rushed to hospital. Three other defendants were subsequently taken to hospital in ambulances.
At the time of the adjournment, less than half of the bail hearings for the 47 defendants had been heard, a reporter in court said.
The hearing is expected to resume later this morning. – AFP, March 2, 2021
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