Western governments and human rights organisations have condemned yesterday's jailing of 45 pro-democracy activists by Hong Kong's High Court.

A former legal academic and a barrister are among the group sentenced for conspiracy to commit subversion. The judgment has been made under the controversial National Security Law (NSL) introduced in Hong Kong in 2020 by Beijing and is the city's largest national security prosecution to date. 

Those convicted were among the 'Hong Kong 47' group of activists who were initially arrested and charged over their involvement in an unofficial primary election in July 2020 to choose candidates to stand on the city’s legislative council. Two were acquitted in May this year, while 31 pleaded guilty and 14 have been convicted after trial. 

Benny Tai Yiu-ting, a former associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, was described as the "mastermind" behind the scheme and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment. Ex-lawmaker Au Nok-hin and former district councillors Andrew Chiu Ka-yin and Ben Chung Kam-lun were identified as "principal offenders" alongside Tai Yiu-ting and handed jail terms of between six and seven years. 

Barrister Alvin Yeung Ngok-kiu, the former leader of the liberal Civic Party and a member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, was sentenced to five years and one month after it was found he had taken "a pro-active and leading role in the Civic Party’s participation of the scheme." 

Responding to the sentencing a US State Department spokesman said: "We continue to urge the PRC government and Hong Kong authorities to uphold Hong Kong’s judicial independence, cease the use of vague national security laws to silence those peacefully expressing their political views, and restore the openness that was so crucial to Hong Kong’s vitality and success." 

Catherine West, the UK minister for the Indo-Pacific, added: "China’s imposition of the NSL in Hong Kong has eroded the rights and freedoms of Hong Kongers. Today’s sentencing is a clear demonstration of the Hong Kong authorities’ use of the NSL to criminalise political dissent."

The court said it had accepted that some of the defendants "did not know the scheme was an unlawful one ... but notable [sic] not for [Tai Yiu-ting] and [Yeung Ngok-kiu] given the fact that both of them were lawyers."

It added that it did not reduce either of their sentences as "not only they were lawyers but also both were absolutely adamant in pushing for the implementation of the scheme. To them whether the scheme was lawful or not was neither here nor there. They sold their idea to others."

Others to be sentenced included Claudia Mo Man, a journalist and founding member of the Civic Party, and Tat Cheng, a former councillor of the Eastern District of the HKSAR.

Both were found to be "active participants" in the scheme, which the court said would have had "adverse consequences" that would be "far reaching and no less serious than overthrowing the Government of the HKSAR" had it been carried out to its conclusion. 

In April 2020 Tai had published a manifesto named "Ten Steps to Mutual Destruction" that outlined a plan to force the Hong Kong and Beijing governments to restore Hong Kong’s autonomy and democracy, The Diplomat reported, with the primaries representing the first part of that plan. 

A spokesperson for the Hong Kong government commented: ​"It is clear from the reasons for sentencing handed down by the court that the defendants, led by Tai Yiu-ting, have invested a great deal of time and money in premeditating and planning the so-called 'primary election', which showed that they had a long-term plan to make the scheme a success. 

"As such, the court rejected the proposition of the defence that the scheme was bound to fail as a mitigation reason. Tai Yiu-ting was the initiator of the whole scheme and the '10 steps to mutual destruction' he put forward advocated revolution in substance. Besides, all the defendants who participated in the so-called 'primary election' played an essential role in the whole scheme."

Among those condemning the sentences was former UK Supreme Court judge Jonathan Sumption, who resigned from his positions as a non-permanent judge of the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal (CFA) in June warning that the city was “slowly becoming a totalitarian state”.

He told The Guardian newspaper the sentences were "not surprising", adding: “The real outrage is their conviction in the first place. These people were respectable politicians, journalists, academics and trade unionists, lawfully campaigning for a majority of the elective seats in the legislative council with a view to obtaining faster progress towards universal suffrage, something which is stated in the basic law to be the ultimate aim.”

In August, former UK Supreme Court president Lord Neuberger resigned from his role as chair of the High Level Panel of Legal Experts on Media Freedom amid controversy over his continued participation as a judge in the CFA stating it was "undesirable that focus on my position as a non-permanent judge in Hong Kong should take away, or distract, from the critical and impactful work" if the panel.