Tim the Ratcast here, reporting from a storm drain under Hong Kong's High Court, where the air is damp and the rule of law is whatever the national security statute says it is this morning.
Joshua Wong, once the teenage face of Hong Kong's pro-democracy protests, was sentenced Thursday to 10 years in prison for conspiring to collude with foreign forces under the Beijing-imposed national security law. He pleaded guilty in September. He is already serving time for subversion and was due out in January. Two months and two days of the new term will run concurrently. The rest of the decade does not.
So the government waited until he almost reached the exit, then stacked another sentence on the door. That's not justice. That's a hotel that charges you for next week's stay after you've already packed.
Chief Executive John Lee said Wong and self-exiled activist Nathan Law were "among the primary culprits responsible for undermining Hong Kong's prosperity and stability." Beijing's foreign ministry said China "firmly supports" Hong Kong in safeguarding national security "in accordance with the law," which is how every authoritarian press release spells "we did this on purpose."
Prosecutors said Wong and Law lobbied for foreign sanctions and blockades against Beijing between July and late November 2020. High Court Judge William Tam called the offense "grave," started at 13 years, then cut three for the guilty plea, landing on the statutory minimum of 10. Human Rights Watch called the ruling "cruel and unjust." The government welcomed it as a "vital deterrent."
A vital deterrent against what, exactly? Asking other countries to notice?
Wong is 30. He started organizing against "patriotic education" at 14. By 2014 he was a face of the Umbrella Movement. By 2020 the party he co-founded was gone, the law was in, and the remaining career path for a democracy activist was exile or a cell. Nathan Law took the exile door. Wong stayed. The court just locked both doors and kept the key.
Our sewer legal team obtained a completely fictional sentencing memo from a fictional stability office:
"Subject remains inconvenient. Prior term insufficiently inconvenient. Recommend decade. Concurrent months: token. Public messaging: prosperity."
A fictional government spokesman told The Demorat, "Hong Kong remains open for business. The business of disagreeing is temporarily closed for renovations that will never finish."
On the sewer scale, this earns five rats out of five. Not for creativity. For efficiency. Most governments need a show trial and a parade. These people already had him in custody and still managed a press release about public well-being.
If "lobbying for sanctions" is a national security offense, then every foreign ministry on Earth is a crime scene. The difference is those ministries have embassies. Wong had a court date.
The city that sold itself as Asia's freest financial hub just told the world the product has been discontinued. Investors can still land. Dissent cannot.
And here's your bill: AAA's national regular gas average sits at $4.10 a gallon as of Nov. 5, so a 15-gallon fill-up is about $61.50, while Beijing lectures the West about "stability" and free speech stays listed as out of stock.
This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.
The real story that inspired this
