HONG KONG: A veteran unionist in Hong Kong was jailed on Thursday (Dec 21) for six months for “perverting the course of justice” by removing a phone and laptop from her sister’s residence before a police search to investigate a national security offence.
The defendant Marilyn Tang, 63, and her elder sister Elizabeth, were both pioneers in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy union movement and active since the 1980s.
Elizabeth was arrested in March over suspicion of “collusion with foreign forces”, an offence that carries up to life in prison under the sweeping national security law Beijing imposed on the financial hub in 2020 to quell dissent.
She has not yet been charged but Marilyn was prosecuted in September for committing “an act or a series of acts … intended to pervert the course of public justice”.
The court heard that Marilyn entered Elizabeth’s residence twice after her sister’s arrest, removing a laptop computer and a mobile phone before police carried out a search.
The devices were not interfered with and did not contain any criminal evidence, nor did they bear any influence on her sister’s case, said the sentencing judge Tsang Hing-tung on Thursday.
“The nature of the offence is of a serious nature, and imprisonment is inevitable,” Tsang said.
Marilyn, who pleaded guilty earlier this month, made a thumbs-up gesture when some members of the public shouted “add oil” as the guards led her out of the defendant’s dock.
The local phrase of encouragement became a defiant rallying cry when deployed during 2019’s massive and at times violent pro-democracy protests.
Elizabeth is married to Lee Cheuk-yan, who is also a prominent activist and a leader of the city’s now-banned annual candlelight vigil for the victims of Beijing’s deadly 1989 crackdown on democracy protesters.
Lee has been remanded for more than two years over a separate national security case that accuses him, two other vigil leaders and their disbanded Hong Kong Alliance of “incitement to subversion”.
Elizabeth was arrested outside Hong Kong’s Stanley Prison after she returned to the city and visited Lee.
Source: CNA
