Imperturbable, energetic and courageous, she was at every turn during the massive pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong throughout 2019. “Grandma Wong”, as she is affectionately known, a 60-year-old with gray-white hair, was convicted and imprisoned Wednesday, July 13 for illegal assembly, the latest figure from this vast movement to be imprisoned.
Eight months in prison for unlawful assembly
Alexandra Wong is known for demonstrating while waving the Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom of which Hong Kong was still a colony when she was born before being returned to China on July 1, 1997. The prosecution accused her of taking part in two banned gatherings on August 11, 2019 and shouting “offensive words”. He also felt that the flag she was waving and the slogans she was chanting had encouraged an illegal assembly.
For these facts, she was sentenced to eight months in prison, Judge Adam Yim invoking ” the extent “ demonstrations and “the disorder inflicted on the social order”. The charge of “unlawful assembly” is one of the most used by justice against the participants in these monster demonstrations, often violent, which lasted for months. More than 2,800 people have been prosecuted in connection with this movement. Ms Wong, who had pleaded not guilty earlier in the year, amended her defense on Wednesday July 13 at the start of her trial, criticizing the Hong Kong government, which she called a ” authoritarian regime “.
She also claimed that she was interrogated and detained by security officers in mainland China, taken to a “patriotic journey” then de facto house arrest for nearly fourteen months and forced to make a written and filmed confession before being allowed to return to Hong Kong.
Already condemned several times
Last April, she received a six-day suspended prison sentence in a separate case of obstructing a police officer. Then, in July, she was sentenced to a month in prison for the assault on a security guard at the Supreme Court in January 2019. She joins a long list of activists jailed in connection with Hong Kong’s crackdown on any dissent, launched through a national security law imposed by Beijing in mid-2020 after major pro-democracy protests in 2019.
On Tuesday July 12, Koo Sze-yiu, a 75-year-old Hong Kong activist with terminal cancer, was sentenced to nine months in prison for attempted sedition. “I don’t mind being a warrior for the democracy movement, and I don’t mind being a martyr for democracy and human rights,” did he declare. “The Chinese government has destroyed freedom and democracy in Hong Kong,” he reacted to the announcement of his sentence, before criticizing Beijing’s treatment of dissidents in mainland China, citing opaque trials and long prison sentences. “Compared to what they are going through, my sacrifice is nothing. »