Hong Kong to Rule on Democracy Activists in Largest National Security Trial

A Hong Kong court will begin issuing verdicts on Thursday in the city’s largest national security trial, as the authorities use sweeping powers imposed by Beijing to quash political dissent in the Chinese territory.

The 47 pro-democracy activists and opposition leaders in the trial — including Benny Tai, a former law professor, and Joshua Wong, a protest leader and founder of a student group — face prison sentences, in some cases for perhaps as long as life. Their offense: holding a primary election to improve their chances in citywide polls.

Most of the defendants have spent at least the last three years in detention ahead of and during the 118-day trial. On Thursday, judges picked by Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leader were set to start handing down verdicts on 16 of them who had pleaded not guilty. Those who are convicted will be sentenced later, along with 31 others who had entered guilty pleas.

The expected convictions and the sentences to follow would effectively turn the vanguard of the city’s opposition, a hallmark of its once-vibrant political scene, into a generation of political prisoners.

Some are former lawmakers who joined politics after Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule by the British in 1997. Others are activists and legislators who have advocated self-determination for Hong Kong with more confrontational tactics. Several, like Mr. Wong, who rose to fame as a bespectacled teenage activist, were among the students leading large street occupations for the right to vote in 2014.