In Hong Kong two years ago, not many people outside the social movement circle had heard the name Zou Xingtong. Today, two years later, this name is known to every family. People on one side called her a chivalrous girl and a real Hong Kong daughter; people on the other side called her a troublemaker and a suspect of the National Security Law. There are also many neutral people who claim to be indifferent to politics, especially parents, after seeing the media’s description of her experience from the top student in the college entrance examination, barrister to prison, they can’t help shaking their heads and sighing: “What a pity! Such a smart person!” Then he turned his head to look at his own child: “You must not be eager to learn, but learn from Zou Xingtong!”
If there are really more young people with Zou’s intelligence and her courage, perhaps this world can be a little less fearful and more laughter.
From Hong Kong to the UK to China: an unusual journey
Let’s start with some familiar resumes. Born in 1985, grew up in Hong Kong, from a middle-class family who is concerned about the development of democracy in China and has a June 4th complex (Zou said that apart from the few years she studied abroad, she has participated in Victoria Park’s memorial candlelight every year since elementary school) assembly). With good grades since childhood, he was admitted to the Department of Geophysics of Cambridge University with the attitude of “the champion of the college entrance examination”, and even obtained a doctoral degree to study earthquakes. Unfortunately, after the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, the Chinese government withdrew due to political factors and placed it on the Qinghai Plateau. The data collection station in China suspended her doctoral research and made her feel that China’s problem is not a lack of scientific research, but a political system problem . Feeling that her interest is to change China, she decided to drop out of school and return to Hong Kong, just in time to find a job assisting Chinese workers in safeguarding their rights. In the days of working with injured workers in China to defend their rights according to law, she observed that she was unfamiliar with the law, and was surprised by a system that insists on ruling the country according to the law. Why are the court’s judgments so unfair? Therefore, she decided to study law to find out, and successfully became a barrister. According to the logic of the current Hong Kong National Security Law, is it not the Chinese government that prompted or even incited her to leave the British academia to focus on China affairs and become a barrister, and then to become the vice-chairman of the stake?
In 2010, Zou joined the “Hong Kong Citizens Supporting Patriotic Democratic Movement Association” (hereinafter referred to as the “Stake”) as a volunteer, and was elected as the vice-chairman in 2015. She once said that she actually wanted to devote more time to China to do rights protection work, and she did not fully agree with the operation of the stake, believing that it was out of touch with the current situation in China, and she had been thinking about how to retire from the stake. After the Umbrella Movement in 2014, very few people were willing to join the stake, let alone become a standing committee member or vice-chairman. But she is someone who doesn’t know how to refuse, and she can’t bear to have no one to take over this organization, which is of great significance to Hong Kong people. The most decisive reason for her to stay in Hong Kong to take over the work of the stake is that since 2019, the mainland will no longer allow her to enter the country, not only unable to be with her boyfriend (now her fiancé!) Ye Du – a well-known human rights activist in China When we met, her rights protection work in China was also forced to suspend. The great fortune in misfortune is that she avoided the fate of being disappeared on the mainland, or being held in a mainland prison and tortured, just like citizen journalist Zhang Zhan . At the same time, the stake is facing wave after wave of suppression. On the eve of June 4th in 2021, chairman Li Zhuo and another vice-chairman, He Junren , have been imprisoned one after another. Go without hesitation.
Many Hong Kong people admire Zou’s bravery in the face of power, which may be related to her working in the mainland for many years and experiencing the shock of the 709 arrests ; , Li Qiaochu, Zhen Jianghua… Knowing that under such conditions, I opened my eyes and did what I should do. I think these experiences at least gave me courage.” He also prepared himself to be arrested at any time.
In 2020, 12 young Hong Kong youths who were arrested during the 2019 campaign against the amendment of the extradition law were intercepted by the Chinese Coast Guard while trying to exile in Taiwan while awaiting trial on bail, and were detained in Shenzhen and charged with multiple crimes. Zou Xingtong, who is familiar with the mainland judicial system, was unable to go to the mainland to assist in person, but joined the “12 Hong Kong People’s Concern Group” to monitor and report the treatment of the 12 Hong Kong people with civil society members in Hong Kong, for the unfair judicial process they encountered. Speak up and gain international attention.
The stupidity not intimidated by the sentence of the crime
So far, Zou has been charged with “illegally inciting others to knowingly participate in an unapproved assembly without legal authority or reasonable excuse” (hereinafter referred to as the crime of incitement) for lighting a candle in Victoria Park on June 4, 2020. On the same day and in the same place, he was convicted of “knowingly participating in an unauthorized assembly” and sentenced to 12 months and 6 months respectively . Zou has said that she will not appeal, because “what should be said has been said, and the records that should be kept are also kept.” Everyone knows who is right and who is wrong, and she does not need official recognition.
On June 4, 2021, she was first “preventatively arrested” by the police, and then charged with “unlawfully inciting an unidentified person to participate in an unsanctioned public assembly” and was sentenced to 15 months in prison. Even with the sentence she was previously convicted of participating in the June 4 illegal assembly in 2020, she must serve a total of 22 months for the two-year “June 4 assembly”. When judge Chen Huimin sentencing, he mistakenly said that Zou Xingtong committed the crime while on bail, so he needed to be sentenced for three months. After Fang verified and learned that Zou’s statement was correct, he still pointed out that it was technically the same as the crime committed during the bail period, and announced that the original sentence was upheld . It can be seen that the judge has already decided to severely sentence Zou, regardless of his professional ethics and legal principles.
Stake chairman Li Zhuoren, vice-chairmen Zou Xingtong and Ho Junren were charged with “inciting subversion of state power”. The charge sheet alleges they were suspected of inciting others to subvert the Chinese regime in Hong Kong between July 1, 2020 and September 8, 2021. In addition, Zou Xingtong and four members of the Stake Standing Committee were charged with the crime of “failure to provide information in compliance with the notification requirements” under the “Implementation Rules of Article 43 of the Hong Kong National Security Law”. Zou Xingtong and others believed that the police’s actions were unreasonable, and refused to reply to the letter for spreading fear for the police . The two cases will be arraigned and reviewed before trial in January 2022.
Once convicted of the crime of “inciting others to subvert state power”, if the circumstances are serious, he shall be sentenced to fixed-term imprisonment of not less than five years but not more than 10 years. six months.
Zou has been imprisoned since he was arrested by the National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police on September 8, 2021, and his repeated applications for bail were refused. Four human rights experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council issued a statement on October 12, paying attention to Zou’s accusation, saying that the “Hong Kong National Security Law” has raised concerns about a fair trial. Continuing to threaten national security, she refused her bail application and refused to relax the restrictions on bail reporting, which failed to ensure the interests of justice and raised questions about a fair trial. UN experts have urged the Hong Kong government to immediately repeal and independently review the Hong Kong National Security Law to ensure compliance with human rights and international law, and to reconsider its use .
Fortunately, independent media and friends came to the court to record and visit, so that the outside world has been informed of her current situation and views on the case , and even occasionally gossip and learned that what she misses most in prison is the spicy hot pot.
She once said that jail time in Hong Kong is nothing compared to jail time in mainland China . With her optimistic personality, she even considers herself to be a “bourgeois” compared to her fellow prisoners in Hong Kong. Friends have always come to visit and give her supplies. Although the Correctional Services Department has returned many parcels after review, she has consciously compared her. The other prisoners have been much luckier.
Courts as venues for struggle
As a barrister, she has also fought many civil rights lawsuits . Of course, she understands that these are all political prosecutions. Beijing hopes to use the law and the court as a package to sweep away dissidents, and dare to point out that they are the support of the executioner. The federation rushed to kill them all; it was also supposed to kill chickens to warn the monkeys, so that Hong Kong people would not dare to publicly mourn June 4th in the future. After all, in the 30 years from 1989 to 2019, Hong Kong was the only place in Chinese territory where people wore black clothes and held bouquets and candles on the street on June 4th, regardless of whether they were going to mourn June 4th or not, they were not afraid of being arrested. , and the CCP is eager to cut off the “privilege” of “freedom from fear” of Hong Kong people as soon as possible.
The official script has long been written: Although there are very few cases of the new crown virus in Hong Kong and people’s livelihood has returned to normal, the police first objected to the stake holding a candlelight rally in Victoria Park on the grounds of epidemic prevention. The stake announced the cancellation of the rally but called on the public to bloom everywhere. The public is requested to go to their preferred location or participate in the candlelight mourning online. As the vice-chairman of the stake, Zou Xingtong, who was the most symbolic of Victoria Park to her, chose to go to Victoria Park to mourn by herself. Even though the so-called prohibited assembly no longer exists, the prosecution insists on charging her with “incitement” for appearing in Victoria Park on June 4th in 2020 and planning to pay her respects in Victoria Park in 2021. The “preventive arrest” severely violated her freedom of person and assembly, and forced the disbandment of the stake on September 25, 2021.
Although I know that even though the prosecution’s evidence is weak but the background is strong, the entire Department of Justice and the judiciary are now under the control of the National Security Bureau, and the court is no longer a place to seek justice; I also know that obediently admitting guilt can shorten the sentence and avoid the torment and heaviness of a long trial. However, with her adherence to the principle, she will never plead guilty. Even when she was incarcerated, she had no information, could not access the Internet, and the required defense materials were often intercepted by the Correctional Services Department, but she still wrote astonishing statements and thoughts.
She pointed out that the current charges against her and each of the stakes are ” stigmatization in the name of the law, which is politics. The logic of the law, the calculation of sentences, silence us, let us cooperate, let us confess. So , the law domesticates the struggle, but opens up a platform for narratives to those in power. And the version of the facts, only they are left, whether it can be proved legally or not (and the political case is almost certain to prove it), their argument It is the only “truth”. And her plea of ??not guilty is precisely in order not to fall for such tricks, and even “confessing but not admitting wrong” is not enough for her . Confession, admitting that the law is what they say, so I am guilty. … You can force me to do hard labor to wash the toilet and eat stinky porridge, but you can’t force me to say something different from my heart. You may even force me not to speak, but force me to No, I say things I don’t believe. “
Not guilty is also her strategy: in politically-related cases, every court case, debate, and progress are events that can be reported and discussed. If you do it a little longer, the case will have more exposure opportunities and fermentation time. This made it impossible for the judge to issue a quick sentence and the public did not know the ins and outs of the incident, so they swallowed the official “qualification”. In cases under the National Security Law, bail is difficult to obtain, and the expected sentence is relatively long. Not guilty can make the legal process longer, so that the defendant has more opportunities to appear in court and make submissions, so as not to disappear in front of people all at once.
She is such a staunch fighter. Although fellow travelers were worried about what happened to her, it was not worth it, and even called her “Unfortunate Tong”, but she always faced it with a smile . , couldn’t help laughing for a while, which made the judge ask her not to laugh every time she answered the question . However, in the face of such absurd accusations and courts, laughing and defending yourself is more inspiring than silent or tearful confession!
Thanks to Zou Xingtong for personally demonstrating what it means not to be overwhelmed by fear and voluntarily give up your rights; even if you understand self-defense, you can’t get rid of “guilt”, but at least let the unreasonable and unhelpful prosecutors be recorded; no need to rely on official authority to declare who is right and who is wrong. Everyone also has the ability to find out the truth. I hope that in the near future, her self-defense and submissions will be published, recording the darkest time in Hong Kong’s judicial history, and there will still be people who will speak out without being arrogant or humble!
