The 90-year-old former Bishop of Hong Kong, Cardinal Zen, and his five co-defendants, including several prominent civil society figures, were found guilty and fined on Friday morning November 25. The reason: an administrative fault linked to a fund they had created to support the demonstrators arrested during the great revolt movement of the summer of 2019.
With our correspondent in Hong Kong, Florence de Changy
The verdict: guilty. The sentence: 4,000 Hong Kong dollars fine per person, or just under 500 euros. The decision fell unsurprisingly in the court of the West Kowloon court on Friday morning. The courts have been in punitive mode since the 2019 riots and it is now extremely rare for the government to lose its cases.
A dialogue of the deaf
Especially when, as in this case, these are charismatic personalities who are in the dock. Because alongside the old Cardinal Zen 90 years old, was the famous human rights lawyer, Margaret Ng, 74 years old; former MP Cyd Ho, 68, recently released from prison; prominent sociologist Hui Po-keung, 62, who was arrested at the airport in May as he prepared to take up a new academic post in Italy; and canto-pop star and icon of the LGBT community, Denise Ho, 45, one of the few artists in Hong Kong publicly engaged in the pro-democracy movement.
Their crime: not having registered within the time limits the association they had set up to help the demonstrators arrested, except that the association in question was a fund, a status that does not require registration. Suffice to say that the nine days of trial were nothing but a dialogue of the deaf.