A Portuguese national pleaded guilty to inciting subversion in a Hong Kong court on Tuesday that rejected the defense’s request to release Joseph John on bail.
The man, also known as Wong Kin Chung, accepted the charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, during a hearing in Wanchai District Court.
The defense lawyer filed a request for the Portuguese, who have been detained since late October, to be released on bail for an amount of 26,000 Hong Kong dollars (about 3,000 euros).
However, Judge Stanley Chan Kwong-chi denied the request, considering that the defendant continues to pose a threat to China’s national security, and again postponed the start of the trial for the fourth time.
Stanley Chan is one of the judges appointed by the Hong Kong government to hear cases related to the national security law, enacted by Beijing in 2020 to end dissent in China’s semi-autonomous region.
This law created the crime of incitement to subversion, with a minimum sentence of five years in prison and a maximum sentence of 10 years, which was added by the Attorney General’s Office on March 9 to the charge against Joseph John.
The Portuguese were initially charged with sedition, under another British colonial-era law, with a maximum penalty of two years in prison.
According to the indictment, Joseph John was an administrator of the Facebook profile of the Hong Kong Independence Party. The organization was founded in the United Kingdom in 2015, but the British Electoral Commission withdrew its status as a political party in 2018.
The suspect, an employee of the UK’s Royal College of Music, will have used the profile since September 2019 to “launch a campaign to raise money for military spending, send petitions to foreign government pages and appeal to do on the support of foreign troops”.
The man reportedly appealed to London to declare that China was “illegally occupying” Hong Kong, asking the United Kingdom and the United States to send troops to the former British colony, control of which passed to Beijing in 1997.
Tuesday’s session was attended by the Consul General of Portugal in Macau and Hong Kong, Alexandre Leitão, and a representative of the European Union Delegation in Hong Kong.
The defendant, who was born in Hong Kong and has permanent residency status in the Chinese Special Administrative Region, will have requested a safe conduct to travel into the interior of China.
China, whose Chinese legal regime does not recognize dual citizenship, only grants safe conduct to people of Chinese ethnicity and believes the document serves as recognition of Chinese nationality.
Source: DN
