Mr. Benny Tai, sentenced to 10 years in Hong Kong’s 47-person case, spends his 62nd birthday in prison

(Rights Defense Network Information Center report) On July 14, 2026, this outlet learned that on July 12, 2026, Mr. Benny Tai, who was sentenced to 10 years in Hong Kong’s 47-person case, spent his 62nd birthday in prison. On November 19, 2024, Mr. Benny Tai was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the Hong Kong 47-person case for conspiracy to subvert state power.

Benny Tai’s biography: Born on July 12, 1964; English name Benny Tai Yiu-ting; formerly a British Hong Kong national, now a national of the People’s Republic of China (Hong Kong) and the United Kingdom; a Christian, Hong Kong legal scholar, former associate dean and associate professor of the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong, a “ringleader” of unrest in Hong Kong in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, one of the “three leaders of Occupy Central,” a pro-democracy opinion leader, and a political prisoner detained by China.

Raised in Hong Kong from childhood; in the 1980s, after graduating from secondary school, he studied in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong, obtaining a bachelor’s degree in law, followed by a postgraduate certificate in law, and a master’s degree in law from the University of London; in his early years he had strong “feelings for China,” enjoyed reading Chinese and Chinese history, and later, during his university years, came to understand, after absorbing ideas of democracy and freedom, that a country’s strength lies not only in becoming wealthy and building a strong military, but in moving toward constitutional government. He subsequently devoted himself to research on constitutions, constitutional government, public law, the relationship between law, politics and religion, human rights, participatory democracy and other subjects, and became a pro-democracy opinion leader; after graduating from university, he worked as a legislative assistant in the office of pro-democracy leader Martin Lee Chu-ming, and was one of the two student representatives on the Hong Kong Basic Law Consultative Committee, while also raising criticism and questioning the implementation of “one country, two systems”; he later worked for many years as an associate professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong, and served as associate dean of the Faculty of Law from 2000 to 2008; in 2013, he became known for proposing the idea of “Occupy Central with Love and Peace”;

In February 2016, April 2017 and 2019, he successively proposed actions including the ThunderGo plan, the Wind and Cloud plan, and the pro-democracy camp’s 35+ primary election, winning strong support and response from Hong Kong residents, but repeatedly coming under attack from pro-Beijing establishment figures and media outlets.

In 2019, after the National Security Law was formally implemented in Hong Kong, he was quickly arrested by national security police on the grounds that he had initiated the Occupy Central movement and had engaged in acts such as “inciting others” or “inciting others to incite” at different locations in Central and Admiralty, Hong Kong, in September 2014; on April 9, 2019, he was found guilty by the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts of “conspiracy to commit public nuisance” and “incitement to commit public nuisance,” and was sentenced to 16 months in prison on April 24; dissatisfied, he appealed and applied for bail; on August 15, 2019, after serving four months, he was finally granted bail of HK$100,000 pending appeal, but was required to surrender his travel documents and barred from leaving Hong Kong; on March 4, 2020, his bail was revoked by the High Court of Hong Kong and he returned to prison;

On January 6, 2021, he was again arrested, along with other participants in the 2020 Legislative Council election’s pro-democracy primary election (47 people in total, later known as the 47-person case), on suspicion of “conspiracy to subvert state power” under the National Security Law;

After being remanded in custody for more than four years, on May 30, 2024, 45 of the 47 defendants in the case were found guilty by the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts, which said that he, Au Nok-hin, Andrew Chiu Ka-yin, Gordon Ng Ching-lin and Wu Chi-hang were the five organizers of the primary election and should be regarded as principal offenders; on November 19, 2024, the 47 defendants were sentenced together at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with his sentence running until January 2031; the remaining defendants were also given heavy sentences ranging from 4 years and 2 months to 7 years and 9 months. He is currently serving his sentence at Shek Pik Prison on Lantau Island, Hong Kong.