Since Beijing imposed a national-security law on Hong Kong, pro-democracy leaders have spent months without trial and fear they will spend the rest of their lives behind bars
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Now the 43-year-old Australian national expects to face at least 10 years behind bars if convicted of conspiracy to commit subversion with 46 others under a National Security Law—commonly known as the NSL—imposed by Beijing two years ago. But that must wait until he gets to defend himself in court. And not in front of a jury, but before national-security judges handpicked by the government, where he will be fighting charges that prosecutors have yet to reveal in detail.
Mr. Ng—pictured here in May 2021 boarding a prison bus—has been waiting almost 500 days for that moment. From inside a prison cell, after he was denied bail in another of the NSL’s deviations from Hong Kong’s common-law tradition. Beijing had promised the judicial system would remain intact for at least 50 years when it took back control of the former British colony in 1997.Shortly before midnight on June 30, 2020, the NSL came into force.
The arrests began within hours, after thousands marched in defiance of the new law. Police arrested almost 400 people that day—10 of them under the NSL. The pro-democracy protests that had paralyzed the Asian financial hub for more than a year fizzled out soon after.
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