Hong Kong’s leader yesterday said that people convicted on national security charges would no longer be eligible for early release for good behavior under a new law enacted by the territory’s authorities at the weekend.
His comments came after local media reported that democracy advocate Ma Chun-man (馬俊文), who was convicted in 2021 for “incitement of secession” and was expected to be released on Monday, was still in prison.
Hong Kong’s massive and at times violent pro-democracy protests in 2019 brought hundreds of thousands to the streets demanding greater autonomy from Beijing. In response, authorities cracked down on protesters and Beijing imposed a National Security Law in 2020, which was supplemented by a new homegrown one enacted over the weekend.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“It’s been made very clear that if a prisoner is serving a sentence in respect to his conviction of an offense endangering national security, the prisoner is not entitled to remission,” Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee (李家超) said yesterday about the new law when asked about Ma’s case.
Commonly referred to as Article 23, the law also applies to those sentenced before it was passed, he said.
“The ordinance has also made it clear that the new rule applies no matter if the sentence of the prisoner was imposed before or after the commencement of the relevant amendment,” Lee said, adding that exceptions could be made by the correctional services commissioner.
The new law came into force on Saturday — two days before Ma’s scheduled release — putting into immediate effect tough penalties of up to life imprisonment for certain national security crimes, including treason and insurrection.
The new law also amended Hong Kong’s prison rules, removing a possible one-third sentence reduction due to good behavior for prisoners convicted of contravening the national security law or other offenses deemed national security threats by authorities.
Ma, 34 — nicknamed “Captain America 2.0” for carrying a replica of the Marvel superhero’s shield at protest rallies in 2019 — was convicted of “incitement to secession” in 2021.
He had successfully appealed to reduce his sentence by nine months to five years in 2022 as appeal judges deemed his culpability as “relatively low.”
Under the new law, Ma would have to remain behind bars for another 20 months.
“This is exactly telling everyone — do not attempt to carry out any acts or activities that endanger national security as remission is generally not allowed. Do not challenge the law,” Lee said.
Lee, who was Hong Kong’s security for security during the protests and sanctioned by the US for his role, added that anyone unsatisfied with the decision “can seek through legal avenues for a court’s adjudication.”
The Hong Kong Correctional Services Department declined to comment on individual cases.
The commissioner “will consider the actual circumstances of the case and all relevant factors, including the prisoner’s representation,” the department said in a statement on Monday.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
Russian hackers last year targeted a Dutch public facility in the first such an attack on the lowlands country’s infrastructure, its military intelligence services said on Monday. The Netherlands remained an “interesting target country” for Moscow due to its ongoing support for Ukraine, its Hague-based international organizations, high-tech industries and harbors such as Rotterdam, the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) said in its yearly report. Last year, the MIVD “saw a Russian hacker group carry out a cyberattack against the digital control system of a public facility in the Netherlands,” MIVD Director Vice Admiral Peter Reesink said in the 52-page
RSS