Beijing has not forgotten: Cardinal Zen’s conviction upheld

Rome. A Hong Kong court has upheld the conviction of Cardinal Joseph Zen and four other pro-democracy activists, fining them four thousand dollars each for failing to properly register their fund (the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund, which no longer exists) as an association under the city’s Societies Ordinance. The events date back to 2019, when large-scale street demonstrations against Chinese interference in the city were accompanied by numerous incidents of unrest. The judges ruled that “the appellants always intended to use the fund as a means of soliciting, collecting and utilising public donations for the purpose of supporting” those protests. 

However, both Zen and the other appellants have consistently maintained that the fund had not been established as an association, but rather as a trust, and therefore should not be subject to the extremely strict regulations currently in force. Moreover – and this is the crux of the matter – it was clearly demonstrated that it was freedom of association that was being restricted. It is no coincidence that, when announcing the appeal to the Court of Final Appeal, former MP Margaret Ng – one of the four convicted – explained that the real issue is the prohibition on free assembly: “If every time a group of people gathers to do something, this is treated as an association that must apply for registration or an exemption from the police, the impact on Hong Kong’s civil society would be enormous”. The law in force stipulates that an association is required to register or apply for an exemption from registration within one month of its formation. The 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund did not do this because, as its organisers maintained, it was simply a trust. The prosecution, however, has always maintained that the reality was quite different, and that the organisation – with Cardinal Zen at the forefront – provided financial support to protesters involved in street demonstrations, particularly those against the extradition bill strongly backed by Beijing, against which two million people, many of them young, took to the streets in August 2019. Two days after the National Security Law was passed, the 612 Humanitarian Relief Fund was forcibly dissolved and its organisers were arrested. This included Cardinal Zen, who was later released on bail on condition that he would no longer speak out publicly against the authorities. The arrests were made on the grounds of a serious offence: collusion with “foreign forces”. Last February, a Hong Kong court sentenced the 78-year-old businessman and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai to twenty years’ imprisonment. A death sentence. He, too, faced the same charge: conspiracy to collude with foreign forces and the publication of seditious material through his newspaper, the Apple Daily, which had since been shut down and whose journalists had been silenced.