President of dissolved Hong Kong Independence Party gets 5 years’ jail for secession offence tied to online posts
- Joseph John, a UK resident of Portuguese nationality, sentenced to five years in jail for conspiring to incite others to commit secession
- Judge Ernest Lin says John ‘twisted history’, ‘demonised the Chinese government’ and called for fundraising to pay for mercenaries
District Court Judge Ernest Lin Kam-hung on Thursday said Joseph John, 41, had “twisted history”, “demonised the Chinese government” and called for fundraising to pay for mercenaries, among other ideas which included abolishing the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the agreement that paved the way for Hong Kong’s return to Chinese sovereignty.
“For anyone who has a slight understanding of history, these suggestions do not follow historical facts, are not reasonable and do not make sense,” the judge said.
“It also clearly shows his ignorance towards the international political environment.”
According to a summary of facts earlier admitted to by John, a UK resident of Portuguese nationality, the Hong Kong Independence Party was founded by a European citizen in 2014 and registered as a political party in Britain a year later.
The summary document noted the party said on its website that its main aim was to support the Hong Kong people in their struggle for self-determination, awakening them to the importance of safeguarding their identity as a “national group”, as well as aiding them in nation-building and returning to the British Commonwealth.
During the police investigation, John denied creating or publishing any of the posts, claiming he was only managing the party’s social media accounts.
But evidence showed he had access to all the accounts and a business card on his phone stating he was the party’s “president”.
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The court previously heard that 42 posts circulated online from September 16, 2019, to November 1, 2022, which urged the placement of troops in the city by the United States and the United Kingdom as well as the abolition of the joint declaration.
Thirty-five of those posts were made after the Beijing-decreed national security law took effect on June 30, 2020.
Over the years, the disbanded party accumulated more than 7,000 followers on its Facebook page and about 2,000 on its Instagram, Telegram and X – formerly Twitter – channels.
All platforms between 2019 and 2021 were used to repeatedly disseminate the party’s political agenda and call for crowdfunding and protests outside the British consulate in Hong Kong.
Lin said that regardless of whether the defendant had written any of the content, it had been posted on the party’s website and social media accounts for 28 months, which showed it was planned and not a spur of the moment decision where he “lost his senses”.
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Lin originally handed John a jail sentence of 78 months but lowered the term to the minimum of five years based on his guilty plea.
The defendant appeared calm during sentencing, occasionally looking towards the public gallery. Portugal’s top envoy in the city, Alexandre Leitao, and the deputy head of the European Union’s office in Hong Kong, Matthias Kaufmann, were also in court.
John was arrested when he returned to Hong Kong to visit family on November 1, 2022.
The national security law, imposed by Beijing on the city in June 2020 after months of anti-government protests, targets acts of secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, with a maximum penalty of life in prison.
