A Hong Kong judge yesterday increased a university student’s jail sentence to five years for messages sent on Telegram advocating the territory’s independence from China and calls to resist communist rule.
Lui Sai-yu (呂世瑜), a 25-year-old engineering student, on Wednesday pleaded guilty to “incitement to secession,” a crime under Hong Kong’s National Security Law imposed by Beijing in 2020.
Lui is the fourth person jailed under the law, while more than 100 other prosecutions are ongoing.
Photo: AFP
District Judge Amanda Woodcock (胡雅文) said that Lui’s posts — sent to a channel on messaging app Telegram — showed he “condoned, promoted, advocated and incited others to commit secession or undermine national unification.”
The court earlier heard that Lui’s messages included “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” — a protest slogan now deemed illegal. The National Security Law imposes minimum jail terms for serious offences, a feature rarely seen in the territory’s common law tradition.
Woodcock initially jailed Lui for 44 months — factoring in a sentence reduction due to his guilty plea — but prosecutors called for a harsher punishment, arguing the minimum penalty for secession under the security law was no less than five years. The judge then amended the sentence.
Defense lawyer Edwin Choy (蔡維邦) said that Woodcock’s original punishment had already reflected the seriousness of the crime.
Choy told the court that the prosecutors’ proposal of a harsher sentence “might not seem the fairest way to deal with this young man.”
Eric Lai (黎恩灝), a Hong Kong law fellow at Georgetown University’s Center for Asian Law, called the sentencing “bizarre,” reflecting the tension between the security law and Hong Kong’s existing criminal justice system.
The security law has created a class of special courts and local judges have not remedied such “disturbing practices,” Lai wrote on Twitter.
Lui was first arrested in September 2020, when police raided his apartment and found a pepper ball gun, two knives, a baton and protective gear associated with democracy protesters.
Lui’s weapon charges were later dropped as part of a plea deal.
The US government has signed defense cooperation agreements with Japan and the Philippines to boost the deterrence capabilities of countries in the first island chain, a report by the National Security Bureau (NSB) showed. The main countries on the first island chain include the two nations and Taiwan. The bureau is to present the report at a meeting of the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee tomorrow. The US military has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises. It has also installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa
‘WIN-WIN’: The Philippines, and central and eastern European countries are important potential drone cooperation partners, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung said Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in an interview published yesterday confirmed that there are joint ventures between Taiwan and Poland in the drone industry. Lin made the remark in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper). The government-backed Taiwan Excellence Drone International Business Opportunities Alliance and the Polish Chamber of Unmanned Systems on Wednesday last week signed a memorandum of understanding in Poland to develop a “non-China” supply chain for drones and work together on key technologies. Asked if Taiwan prioritized Poland among central and eastern European countries in drone collaboration, Lin
The Chien Feng IV (勁蜂, Mighty Hornet) loitering munition is on track to enter flight tests next month in connection with potential adoption by Taiwanese and US armed forces, a government source said yesterday. The kamikaze drone, which boasts a range of 1,000km, debuted at the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition in September, the official said on condition of anonymity. The Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology and US-based Kratos Defense jointly developed the platform by leveraging the engine and airframe of the latter’s MQM-178 Firejet target drone, they said. The uncrewed aerial vehicle is designed to utilize an artificial intelligence computer
Renewed border fighting between Thailand and Cambodia showed no signs of abating yesterday, leaving hundreds of thousands of displaced people in both countries living in strained conditions as more flooded into temporary shelters. Reporters on the Thai side of the border heard sounds of outgoing, indirect fire yesterday. About 400,000 people have been evacuated from affected areas in Thailand and about 700 schools closed while fighting was ongoing in four border provinces, said Thai Rear Admiral Surasant Kongsiri, a spokesman for the military. Cambodia evacuated more than 127,000 villagers and closed hundreds of schools, the Thai Ministry of Defense said. Thailand’s military announced that
RSS