3 prominent Hong Kongers charged with illegal assembly

Outspoken Hong Kong publisher Jimmy Lai and two prominent opposition politicians were charged Friday with illegal assembly over a pro-democracy march last year, as the territory's Beijing-backed government appeared to move to settle scores over the protests.

The months of demonstrations calling for reforms in semi-autonomous Hong Kong crippled its economy and put its leaders and police force under unprecedented pressure.

Lai, publisher of the Apple Daily newspaper, was picked up from his home by police officers early Friday, while former pro-democracy legislator Yeung Sum and former legislator and vice chairman of the Labour Party, Lee Cheuk-yan, were also arrested.

"Well, the Hong Kong situation is getting tense here, but we have to go on, we have to go on," Lai told reporters after speaking with officers. The three left the police station after being charged and are to appear in court on May 5. They could face up to five years in prison along with fines.

Senior police officer Wong Tung-kwong said all three were charged with illegal assembly in connection with the Aug. 31 march, which was timed to mark the fifth anniversary of a decision by China against fully democratic elections in Hong Kong.

Protests fizzled by year's end amid harsh crackdown

Organizers called off the march after police banned it, but hundreds of thousands of people defied the order and filled the streets in several areas of the Asian financial hub. Protesters threw gasoline bombs at government headquarters and set fires in the streets, while police stormed a subway car and hit passengers with batons and pepper spray in some of the most violent scenes up to that point in the protest movement.

Hong Kong broadcaster TVB showed police on the platform of Prince Edward subway station swinging batons at passengers who backed into one end of a train car behind umbrellas. The video also showed pepper spray being shot through an open door at a group seated on the floor while one man holds up his hands.

Police arrested thousands during the protest movement that began in June but fizzled out toward the end of the year amid harsher tactics by authorities. Prison sentences have been threatened against many on charges including rioting and possessing offensive weapons.

The demonstrations were initially held to voice opposition to proposed legislation that would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be sent to mainland China to stand trial, but later included demands for democratic elections and an investigation into police use of force. Many fear Beijing is steadily eroding the legal guarantees and freedoms Hong Kong was promised after it was handed over from British to Chinese rule in 1997.

Arrests meant to 'suppress opposition voices': advocate

Lai is an entrepreneur and longtime activist who sold his clothing chain under political pressure and has since focused on media in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Friday's arrests are a "shameless attempt to harass and silence those in Hong Kong's pro-democracy movement," the director of Amnesty International Hong Kong, Man-Kei Tam, said in a statement. "It continues the pattern of the authorities using politically motivated charges to suppress opposition voices."

Friday's arrests come just days after China sentenced a Swedish seller of books that looked skeptically on the ruling Communist Party to 10 years for "illegally providing intelligence overseas," in a display of Beijing's hard line toward its critics.

Gui Minhai first disappeared in 2015, when he was believed to have been abducted by Chinese agents from his seaside home in Thailand. He and four others who worked for the same Hong Kong publishing company all went missing at about the same time, only to turn up months later in police custody in mainland China.

In announcing the sentence Tuesday, the Ningbo Intermediate People's Court said Gui, a naturalized Swedish citizen, had admitted to his crime, agreed with the sentence and would not appeal.