Dozens of activists get 4 to 10 years in prison in Hong Kong’s biggest national security case
Dozens of prominent activists were sentenced to up to 10 years in prison on Tuesday in Hong Kong’s biggest national security case under a sweeping law imposed by Beijing that crushed a once-thriving pro-democracy movement.
The defendants were prosecuted in 2021 for their roles in an unofficial primary election under the 2020 national security law. They were accused of attempting to paralyze Hong Kong’s government and force the city’s leader to resign by aiming to win a legislative majority and using it to block government budgets indiscriminately.
The 45 people convicted received prison terms ranging from four years and two months to 10 years. Legal scholar Benny Tai was given the longest sentence.
They either pleaded guilty or were found guilty of conspiracy to commit subversion by three government-approved judges.
The judges said in the verdict that the activists’ plans to effect change through the election would have undermined the government’s authority and created a constitutional crisis.
Observers said the case illustrated how authorities suppressed dissent following huge anti-government protests in 2019, alongside media crackdowns and reduced public choice in elections. They said the drastic changes reflect how Beijing’s promise to retain the former British colony’s civil liberties for 50 years when it returned to China in 1997 is increasingly threadbare.
Beijing and Hong Kong governments insist the law is necessary for the city’s stability.
The subversion case involves pro-democracy activists across the spectrum. Most of them had already been detained for more than three and a half years before the sentencing.
Some activists remorseful, others defiant
As they pleaded for lesser sentences, some activists were remorseful and apologized, while others remained defiant.
Lawyers for Tai and several other defendants argued their clients genuinely believed their actions were lawful at the time.
More than 200 people stood in line in moderate rain and winds Tuesday morning for a seat in the court, including one of the acquitted defendants Lee Yue-shun.
Lee said he hoped members of the public would show they care about the development of the court case.
“The public’s interpretation and understanding has a far-reaching impact on our society’s future development,” he said.
A supporter known as “Grandpa Wong,” who did not know the English spelling of his name, said he wanted to see the convicted activists again. He said he is about 100 years old and feared he wouldn’t be able to see them when they are released from prison.
Wei Siu-lik, a friend of convicted activist Clarisse Yeung, said she arrived at 4 a.m. even though her leg was injured.
“I wanted to let them know there are still many … coming here for them,” she said.
Police formed a tight security cordon for several blocks around the West Kowloon Magistrates Court as supporters lined up outside.
U.S. says trial is ‘politically motivated’
The unofficial primary in July 2020, which drew 610,000 voters, was meant to pick pro-democracy candidates who would then run in the official election.
The pro-democracy camp at that time hoped they could secure a legislative majority, which would allow them to press for the 2019 protest demands, including greater police accountability and democratic elections for the city leader.
But the government postponed the legislative election that would have followed the primary, citing public health risks during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The U.S. has criticized the trial as “politically motivated” and said the democrats should be released as they had been “peacefully participating in political activities” that were legal.
Published at Tue, 19 Nov 2024 03:53:04 +0000
Malnutrition cases grow in Gaza, hospitals report, as little aid and food make it through
Hospital officials in the Gaza Strip say they’re dealing with a growing number of malnutrition cases among children in the enclave as little aid is making it through the crossings and the aid that does enter is violently looted.
Dr. Mohammed Shaheen, an intensive care physician at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, said cases of malnutrition across the Gaza Strip are becoming a greater issue for hospitals.
“They cannot deal with all these patients,” Shaheen said.�
Shaheen said the hospital, which is already operating at full capacity in Deir al-Balah, has had to transfer patients to other hospitals with little to no formula or food for children.
Hanan Sobh, who was displaced from Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza, gave birth to her son prematurely in June, a month before her due date. Since then, her son Ahmad has been lacking the nutrients to grow.
“He’s supposed to gain weight with the milk that the hospital gives him,” she told CBC News from Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza. “He’s the same weight as when he was born … it hasn’t changed.”
Aid groups in Gaza say the food crisis is continually getting worse and the limited supplies aren’t getting to those who need them. Israel says there is enough food and few people are going hungry — despite evidence to the contrary.
‘Malnutrition is everywhere,’ says Palestinian mother
Her son, now five months old, was placed in a hospital incubator for two days after he was born. He remains in the hospital where he is continuing to receive treatment, Sobh said.
The 32-year-old mother, who has been displaced roughly five times over the 13-month long war, said some days they have little formula available but other days there is nothing for her son.
“Malnutrition is everywhere,” she said, adding that mothers like her cannot find food to eat themselves, let alone to help produce milk for their babies.
Sobh is one of many Palestinians feeling the direct impact of malnutrition, blamed on the Israeli army’s control of the crossings to allow food and aid to enter the besieged enclave.
This is not the first time over the war where Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have experienced a dire need for food. Earlier this year, children were reported to be dying of hunger in the Palestinian territory.
Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza where Israeli troops have launched a more than month-long offensive, echoed those concerns, saying cases of malnutrition among children were increasing at its hospital, which was operating at a minimal level.
Abu Safiya said the hospital was under siege by Israeli forces and the World Health Organization had been unable to deliver supplies of food, medicine and surgical equipment. The Israeli army sent tanks and soldiers into Beit Lahiya and the nearby towns of Beit Hanoun and Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, early last month in what it said was a campaign to fight Hamas militants waging attacks and prevent them from regrouping.
“We receive daily distress calls, but we are unable to assist them due to the lack of ambulances, and the situation is catastrophic,” he said.
“Yesterday, I received a distress call from women and children trapped under the rubble, and due to my inability to help them, they are now among the martyrs [dead].”
Hanan Sobh, whose son Ahmad was born a month early and has been suffering from malnutrition since birth, said Wednesday she worries how she will continue to feed her child amid a shortage of formula, food and humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. Her son is receiving treatment at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, one of the hospitals reporting a growing number of malnutrition cases, particularly among children.
Canada expresses concern over malnutrition levels
Last Thursday, Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly expressed deep concern about “catastrophic” humanitarian conditions across Gaza and warned about “the life-threatening levels of acute malnutrition.”
Joly cited a Nov. 8 report by the Famine Review Committee that found a strong likelihood that famine is occurring or imminent in areas within the northern Gaza Strip. The committee has previously found that 133,000 people in Gaza were facing catastrophic food insecurity.
“This means that civilians — men, women and children — are dying because of the lack of humanitarian assistance allowed into Gaza,” she said in a joint statement with International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen.
The statement said not enough aid is reaching those who rely on it for survival and humanitarian agencies and humanitarian workers continue to face preventable impediments.
A UN aid official said last Friday that Gaza aid access had reached a low point, with deliveries to parts of the besieged north of the enclave all but impossible.
Amjad Al-Shawa, director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza, said he has concern there will be no interventions or pressure from the international community to make sure aid is delivered to those who need it, particularly in the north.
“[Over] the next few days we will witness more deterioration … there will be no real entry of aid to the Gaza Strip,” Al-Shawa told CBC News on Wednesday. “We are passing through the worst stage of this war.”
Al-Shawa called on the United Nations to declare Gaza a “famine zone.”
In Khan Younis, dozens of people stood outside the only operating bakery in Khan Younis in central Gaza Monday morning in hopes of getting their hands on bread to feed their families amid a dire flour shortage.
Dozens stood outside the only operating bakery in Khan Younis in central Gaza Monday morning in hopes of getting their hands on bread to feed their families. Palestinians say despite waiting daily for hours, they are often leaving empty-handed amid a flour shortage and bakery closures that have exacerbated an already dire food situation in the besieged enclave.
76 killed in strikes over 24 hours: Health Ministry
Meanwhile, Israeli military strikes across the Gaza Strip killed 20 Palestinians on Monday, including six people who were killed in attacks on tents housing displaced families, according to medics.
Four people, two of them children, were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a tent encampment in the coastal area of Al-Mawasi, designated as a humanitarian zone, while two were killed in temporary shelters in the southern city of Rafah and another in drone fire, health officials said.
In Beit Lahiya town in northern Gaza, medics said an Israeli missile struck a house, killing at least two people and wounding several others. On Sunday, medics and residents said dozens of people were killed or wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a multi-floor residential building in the town.
The Israeli military, which has been fighting Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza since October 2023, said it conducted strikes on “terrorist targets,” in Beit Lahiya.
An Israeli airstrike on a house in Gaza City killed seven people and wounded 10 others, medics said. Later on Monday, an Israeli airstrike killed four people in the Nuseirat camp in the central Gaza Strip, they added.
There has been no Israeli comment on Monday’s incidents.
The Gaza Health Ministry said Israeli military strikes had killed 76 Palestinians across the enclave in the past 24 hours.
In Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, relatives of Palestinians killed in an Israeli airstrike on tents housing displaced families sat beside bodies wrapped in blankets and white shrouds to pay farewell before walking them to graves.
“My brother wasn’t the only one; many others have been martyred in this brutal way — children torn to pieces, civilians shredded. They weren’t carrying weapons or even know ‘the resistance,’ yet they were ripped apart into fragments,” said Mohammed Aboul Hassan, who lost his brother in the attack.
Violent looting of aid convoy causes loss of 98 trucks
A convoy of 109 trucks was violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza, resulting in the loss of 98 trucks in what aid workers say is one of the worst such incidents in the more than 13-month-old war, an UNRWA aid official told Reuters on Monday.
The convoy carrying food provided by UN agencies UNRWA and the World Food Program was instructed by Israel to depart at short notice via an unfamiliar route from Kerem Shalom crossing, Louise Wateridge, UNRWA senior emergency officer, told Reuters.
“This incident highlights the severity of access challenges of bringing aid into southern and central Gaza,” she said, adding that injuries occurred in the incident.
“The urgency of the crisis cannot be overstated; without immediate intervention, severe food shortages are set to worsen, further endangering the lives of over two million people who depend on humanitarian aid to survive,” she said.
Hamas said via its TV station Al-Aqsa TV that its security forces carried out an operation against what it called “gang members” involved in the looting, and killed more than 20 of them. The claim has not been independently verified.
Nearly 100 trucks carrying food for Palestinians were violently looted on Nov. 16 after entering Gaza via an unfamiliar route ordered by Israel, say UNRWA and the World Food Program.
Later on Monday, COGAT, the Israeli military agency that deals with Palestinian civilian affairs, said it facilitated the delivery of 10,000 litres of fuel and 149 packages of medical equipment to hospitals in northern Gaza on Sunday and permitted the transfer of 64 patients and their companions from Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda Hospitals to functioning hospitals elsewhere in the enclave.
A World Food Program spokesperson confirmed the looting and said that many routes in Gaza were currently unpassable due to security issues.
An Israeli official said Israel had been working to address the humanitarian situation since the start of the war, adding that the main problem with aid deliveries was UN distribution challenges.
Israel invaded the Gaza Strip last year after the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed an estimated 1,200 people, according to Israeli authorities, and saw militants abduct more than 250 as hostages. An estimated 100 hostages remain in Gaza.
Israel has since killed more than 43,800 people, according to Gaza health authorities, and destroyed much of the enclave’s infrastructure, forcing most of the 2.3 million population to move several times. The Palestinian civil emergency service estimates that the bodies of 10,000 people may be trapped under the rubble, which would take the reported death toll to more than 50,000.
Published at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 18:38:40 +0000