![]() ![]() While I believe it is unlikely that judges are being given specific instructions or approached directly by politicians in Hong Kong or Beijing, a series of developments have put judges under huge pressure to deliver the “correct” verdicts. In this piece I recently wrote for Tocqueville 21, I tried to dissect the court’s views of civil disobedience in order to get a better understanding of how and why the judiciary’s approach has changed. To get a better idea of the extent of custodial sentences, Kong Tsung-gan’s regularly updated tally of legal proceedings is an excellent resource. ![]() The sentence in the “OC9” trial on 9 April highlighted the new norm of imposing custodial sentences in freedom of expression and association cases, which represents a break with the practices of the 1990s and 2000s. The series of judgments and sentences by Hong Kong courts in the aftermath of the Umbrella Movement have suggested a durable undermining of the autonomy of Hong Kong’s judiciary. (clockwise) Benny Tai, Chan Kinman, Raphaël Wong, Shiu Ka-chun being taken away after the verdict. ![]()
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