HK MEDIA TYCOON JIMMY LAI, OTHERS SENTENCED FOR ILLEGAL ASSEMBLY

Hong Kong media tycoon Jimmy Lai and nine other pro-democracy activists are expected to be sentenced on Friday after they were found guilty of participating in unauthorized assemblies during anti-government protests in 2019, Reuters reported.

It would be the first time that Lai, one of Hong Kong's most prominent democratic activists, who has been in jail since December after being denied bail in a separate national security trial, will receive a sentence. About 100 people, including foreign diplomats, queued outside the court early on Friday to get a seat for the hearing.

Lai was found guilty in two separate trials earlier in April for illegal assemblies on Aug. 18 and Aug. 31, 2019, respectively. The maximum possible punishment is five years in prison.

His repeated arrests have drawn criticism from Western governments and international rights groups, who raised concerns over waning freedoms in the global financial hub, including freedom of speech and assembly.

In the Aug. 18 case, District Court Judge Amanda Woodcock found him guilty together with Martin Lee, who helped launch the city's largest opposition Democratic Party in the 1990s and is often called the former British colony's "father of democracy."

As he entered the court on Friday, Lee said: "I feel completely relaxed, I'm ready to face my sentence."

The other defendants also found guilty, included prominent barrister Margaret Ng and veteran democrats Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, Leung Kwok-hung, Cyd Ho, Au Nok-hin and Leung Yiu-chung.

The latter two had pleaded guilty. In her mitigation speech, Ng said the law must not only be defended in courts or the legislature, but also in the streets.

"When the people, in the last resort, had to give collective expression to their anguish and urge the government to respond, protected only by their expectation that the government will respect their rights, I must be prepared to stand with them, stand by them and stand up for them," she said.

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