The Hong Kong High Court recently handed down six-year sentences to two offenders for conspiracy to cause explosion and conspiracy to commit terrorist activities, as reported by local media outlet the Witness. A third defendant, who was already serving a sentence for subversion, received a 30-month jail term. Remarkably, the defendants were all students aged 17, 21, and 23.
The prosecution had jointly charged seven activists from the pro-independence group “Returning Valiant” for conspiracy to commit terrorist activities under the National Security Law, or alternatively conspiracy to cause explosion under the Crimes Ordinance. The specifics of the case were that the defendants allegedly planned to target court buildings with explosions to destabilize Hong Kong.
Judge Alex Lee argued that one offender, Cheung, who was a university student at the time of the crime, should have demonstrated better understanding of the implications than his co-conspirators who were secondary school students. Despite misleading the prosecution during his testimony, Cheung received a final sentence of six years due to an early guilty plea.
Another defendant, Ho, labelled the “mastermind” by Judge Lee, received the same six-year sentence after a four-year reduction for assisting the prosecution against Cheung. The plan to target court buildings demonstrated a disregard for public safety, which initially resulted in a sentencing starting point of ten years.
The final defendant, Kwok, connected Ho and Cheung but was not involved in planning the attacks. While initially facing a sentence of five and a half years, Judge Lee considered her other ongoing subversion case and judged her sentence as a whole. As a result, her subversion detention order was cancelled and she received a 30-month term instead.
One of the other four defendants sent to training centers was sentenced in May to five years and eight months imprisonment. The remainder were sent to training centers, with their ages at sentencing ranging from 17 to 23. In response to these sentences, the spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Ravina Shamdasani, urged the Hong Kong government to comply with the Convention of the Rights of the Child, emphasizing that arrest, detention, or imprisonment of a child should be a last-resort measure for the shortest appropriate timeframe.