A judge on Saturday imposed a maximum three-year prison sentence on five youths who were members of a Hong Kong organization that promoted independence from Chinese authority for calling for an “armed revolution” in a case involving national security.
The five admitted to “inciting others to overthrow state power” through a group called “Returning Valiant,” even though some of them were minors between the ages of 15 and 18 at the time of the accused offense.
Two more, aged 21 and 26, will receive their sentences at a later time.
After the passage of a comprehensive national security law imposed by China, Justice Kwok Wai-kin described how the defendants had called for a “bloody revolution” to topple the Chinese government at street booths and on Facebook and Instagram.
Kwok referred to the alleged inciting as a serious crime, but instead of sending the defendants to jail because of their “age and immaturity,” he instead sentenced them to a training center or juvenile detention facility.
The three-year maximum stay is left up to the discretion of the penitentiary authorities.
Only one of the five was given bail, and four of the five have already been kept in detention for more than a year.
The group’s pamphlets cited the French and Ukrainian Revolutions as successful armed uprisings, according to prosecutors Anthony Chau and Stella Lo, and also cited Mao Zedong as saying that a revolution is “a violent act of one class overthrowing another.”
The police had raided an industrial building, where they had found flags, flyers, air rifles, ammo, and extendable batons, according to the prosecution.
At least 22 individuals connected to the organization were detained in 2017. According to security law, several people are facing different charges of planning to commit terrorism.
After widespread anti-government and pro-democracy rallies in 2019, Beijing and Hong Kong officials claim the security law has brought stability back to the world’s financial center.
However, human rights experts on the UN Human Rights Committee advocated for the law’s repeal in a report released in July due to worries that it is being exploited to restrict basic freedoms.
