The Hong Kong government has effectively weaponized its legal system to crack down on those who took part in the 2019 protests, according to a new report by the Georgetown Center for Asian Law (GCAL). Based on a large body of data, the report provides an in-depth analysis of hundreds of arrests and prosecutions of the men and women – and in scores of cases, juveniles – who took part in Hong Kong’s historic 2019 pro-democracy protest movement.

The report, The Hong Kong 2019 Protest Movement: A Data Analysis of Arrests and Prosecutions, provides the most detailed study yet published of the criminal prosecutions stemming from the 2019 protests. Drawing on a dataset of 1,615 cases that were concluded between June 2019 and July 2021, our analysis strongly indicates that the government, aided by an overburdened and politically squeezed judiciary, manipulated the criminal justice process to punish protesters, and to deter any future protests.

“We’re watching the decline of Hong Kong’s long-vaunted legal system before our very eyes,” said Thomas Kellogg, executive director of the Center for Asian Law and a co-author of the report. “In case after case, core human rights protections have been ignored. Even basic procedural rights have been severely restricted. It’s getting harder and harder for the government to claim that 2019 protest defendants can get a fair trial.”

The government, with the cooperation of many in the judiciary, has reshaped the legal system in a number of ways in order to achieve its desired results. It has revived the colonial-era Public Order Ordinance, for example, to criminally prosecute peaceful protesters merely for taking part in unapproved protests. Other laws – including seemingly apolitical criminal provisions on possession of offensive weapons and rioting – have also been stretched to convict people whose only transgression was taking part in a protest movement that the government was determined to stop.

The results illustrate the government’s determination to deter would-be peaceful protesters: conviction rates are high, at 75%. Importantly, most individuals convicted of protest-related offenses received custodial sentences. According to our data, a full 71.5% of convicted individuals were sentenced to prison. The comparable figure for the 2014 Umbrella Movement is a much lower 32.7%. The higher rate of custodial sentences stretched across different criminal charges, including unlawful assembly, police obstruction, and police assault. And, in what may be a telling indicator of the judiciary’s increasingly pro-government approach, both conviction rates and sentence length have increased over the two-year period covered by our analysis.

Put simply, the government took steps to ensure that many of those arrested during the 2019 protests would be prosecuted, and that as many as possible would be convicted. In doing so, officials damaged key rights protections that are fundamental to both the common law and Hong Kong’s constitutional structure. Those who were convicted – including those convicted of non-violent offences – faced a high likelihood of imprisonment, even for minor crimes. Broader concerns about justice and fairness, or about the social impact of such high numbers of prosecutions and incarcerations, have been brushed aside by the government.

Our data also reveal disturbing patterns in the handling of basic due process rights. Many defendants have been denied bail for months or even years as they await trial. Case processing times have stretched well beyond the judiciary’s own targets, which means that those denied bail face ever-longer wait times. And in a troubling new trend, the government has been more assertive in its use of the appeals process: in some cases, it has appealed criminal sentences, seeking – and almost uniformly winning – tougher custodial sentences.

“The 2019 protest movement may be over, but the government continues to punish those who took part,” said Kellogg. “More than three years on, the courts need to start pushing back against the government’s misuse of the legal system to crack down on protesters.”

For its part, the government should reconsider calls made by Hong Kongers – including academic experts, members of the Hong Kong Bar Association, and others – to grant a general amnesty, at least for those charged with non-violent crimes. The government should also stop infringing defendants’ core rights. Such moves would be a first step toward repairing the massive social cleavages that have emerged in Hong Kong since 2019, and would signal that the government is serious about moving away from a punitive approach to the pro-democracy protest movement.

The Hong Kong 2019 Protest Movement: A Data Analysis of Arrests and Prosecutions is the latest in a series of GCAL reports on human rights and rule of law in Hong Kong. GCAL’s prior reports on Hong Kong can be found here. Working with the online newsmagazine ChinaFile, GCAL has also published a comprehensive database of National Security Law arrests and prosecutions, which can be found here.