Beijing's plan to introduce a hugely controversial national security law in Hong Kong has sparked widespread fears over its potential impact on the city's much cherished freedoms
Residents of the semi-autonomous city only need to look across the border at mainland China to get a glimpse of how"national security" -- broadly and vaguely defined -- can be used as a convenient pretext for the political prosecution of dissidents, activists, human rights lawyers and journalists.
In 2015, China passed a sweeping new National Security Law covering a much wider array of areas, including, but not limited to defense, politics, the economy, the environment, technology, cyberspace, outer space, culture, ideology and religion. In 2015, veteran journalist Gao Yu was handed a seven-year jail sentence for"illegally providing state secrets to foreign entities." She was accused of disclosing an internal party document in 2013 to an overseas Chinese-language news organization.
More recently, China sentenced Wang Yi, a prominent pastor of one of China's largest house churches, to nine years in jail at the end of December. He was convicted of"inciting subversion of state power." In 2017, lawyer Jiang Tianyong was sentenced to two years in jail for"inciting subversion of state power," and human rights activist Wu Gan was handed a jail term of eight years for"subverting state power."
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