A panel of five judges at Hong Kong’s highest court, Court of Final Appeal, led by Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma freed three young leaders of the city’s pro-democracy movement on Tuesday, including the public face of the protests, Joshua Wong, in a stark reversal of an earlier ruling.
But Wong, 21, Nathan Law and Alex Chow were warned against future acts of dissent, before that, a magistrate’s court had ruled the activists should serve community service and a suspended sentence for a charge of “unlawful assembly” after they and others stormed into a fenced-off area in front of government headquarters in September 2014.
That sparked a night-long standoff with police and was seen as a key trigger for the “Umbrella Movement” that blocked major roads in the city for 79 days in a push for full democracy, presenting Communist Party rulers in Beijing with one of their biggest political challenges in decades.
But this non-jail sentence was challenged by Hong Kong’s Department of Justice that pushed for a review, eventually leading the Court of Appeal to impose jail terms.
The five judges, including a non-permanent foreign judge, Lord Leonard Hoffmann, said in the judgment that they had “quashed the sentences of imprisonment” by the Court of Appeal. They stressed, however, that “future offenders involved in large-scale unlawful assemblies involving violence” will be subject to stricter guidelines laid down by the Court of Appeal.
That sparked a night-long standoff with police and was seen as a key trigger for the “Umbrella Movement” that blocked major roads in the city for 79 days in a push for full democracy, presenting Communist Party rulers in Beijing with one of their biggest political challenges in decades.
But this non-jail sentence was challenged by Hong Kong’s Department of Justice that pushed for a review, eventually leading the Court of Appeal to impose jail terms.
The five judges, including a non-permanent foreign judge, Lord Leonard Hoffmann, said in the judgment that they had “quashed the sentences of imprisonment” by the Court of Appeal. They stressed, however, that “future offenders involved in large-scale unlawful assemblies involving violence” will be subject to stricter guidelines laid down by the Court of Appeal.
