On Tuesday, a group of legislators, opposition politicians, and activists were sentenced to 51-120 months in prison for conspiracy to subvert Hong Kong’s National Security Law. The law was imposed by Beijing in July following pro-democracy protests in the former British colony. The law has had a negative impact on the city’s democratic movement, with leaders jailed or exiled in Western countries.

However, the Legislative Council election was postponed for a year owing to the COVID-19 epidemic, and the politicians were apprehended in an early morning sweep of the city in January 2021. Benny Tai Yiu-ting, 60, a former associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, received the longest prison sentence of ten years for organizing the primary. Along with Yiu-ting, Au Nok-hin, Andrew Chui Ka-yin, and Ben Kam-lun Chung were labelled “principle offenders” in the court document and sentenced to six years, nine months, seven years, and six years, one month, respectively. Of the 47 defendants in the case, 29 pleaded guilty, including the four organizers, 14 were convicted at trial, and two were acquitted.

The sentence was highly decried by Hong Kong observers and pro-democracy activists, and it is interpreted as a message to those who may strike for democracy in the city. Hong Kong residents’ freedoms have been eroded since large protests erupted in 2019 over an extradition law that would allow some defendants to be transported to mainland China to face Communist Party courts. The protests eventually grew into a bigger pro-democracy movement that brought Hong Kong to a halt.

Beijing retaliated by imposing the National Security Law on Hong Kong in July 2020, which criminalized vaguely defined phrases such as secession, sedition, subversion, terrorism, and collaboration with foreign agents to damage China’s national security in Hong Kong. Prior to the sentence announcement on Tuesday, Britain-based Hong Kong Watch labelled the case as not only the largest but also the most significant national security trials since the contentious law was enacted in 2020. It stated that the penalties will create a precedent for future trials involving critics of the Hong Kong government “and mark another downward turn in the crackdown on Hong Kong.”

The sentencing of the Hong Kong 47 is yet another tragic milestone in the decline of Hong Kong’s democracy and society,” said Derek Mitchell, senior consultant at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and patron of Hong Kong Watch, in a statement. The Washington-based Hong Kong Democracy Council NGO stated the trial was “weaponized” and the Hong Kong 47’s sentencing was “an attack on the essence of Hong Kong.” “As the High Court delivers the sentences for those in the 2020 pro-democracy primary election in Hong Kong, they are also sentencing future generations of Hong Kongers who aspire to a political future,” Anna Kwok, HKDC’s executive director, said in a statement.

While the 45 bore the weight of the sentencing, the court has chosen what they intend to do with Hong Kong’s future.