Macau’s First National Security Case: Pre-trial Review Completed in Case of Former Macau Legislative Assembly Member and Core Pro-democracy Figure Au Kam San

(Information Center of the China Human Rights Defenders report) On July 11, 2026, this outlet learned that on July 9, 2026, the Court of First Instance of the Macao SAR announced that it had completed the pre-trial review in the Au Kam San case on July 2, upheld the prosecution’s charges, and would schedule the case for trial. In July 2025, Au Kam San was arrested, becoming the first person in Macau to be arrested under the National Security Law. Au Kam San was charged with three offenses, including “subversion of state power,” and faces a maximum sentence of 25 years.

Au Kam San’s profile: Born on April 30, 1957, Portuguese name Au Kam San, ancestral home in Xinxing County, Guangdong, formerly a Portuguese Macao national and now a dual national of the People’s Republic of China (Macau) and Portugal, formerly a teacher at Macau’s Ching Chau Primary School, later a well-known social activist, former founding member of the “New Macau Society,” former chairperson of the Macau Democratic Development Union, vice-chairperson of the General Assembly of members of “New Power for Macau’s Community Development,” Macau Legislative Assembly member, core pro-democracy figure in Macau, and political prisoner detained by China.

He grew up in Macau from childhood; during university, he studied for a bachelor’s degree in social sciences at the University of East Asia in Macau, and after graduation pursued a master’s degree in education at South China Normal University in mainland China; after completing his studies and returning to Macau, he worked as a teacher at Macau’s Ching Chau Primary School; in 1989, the June Fourth democracy movement took place in mainland China, and several groups in Macau launched marches and various solidarity actions. Because he actively participated in them and joined the political discussion group “Democracy Salon” (later renamed the Macau Democratic Development Union, abbreviated as the Democratic Union), he and several other pro-democracy figures were subjected to multiple pressures, such as professional threats, family pressure, and street violence, after the June Fourth Incident, and were forced to resign or were dismissed. As a result, apart from him and Ng Kuok Cheong, most members of the Democratic Union dispersed; the two later entered politics successively and entered the Legislative Assembly through direct elections, but they continued to organize June Fourth commemorative gatherings until the gatherings were banned by the Chinese Communist Party authorities in Macau;

In 1993, he began serving as a municipal councilor in Macau, and four years later, after Macau’s return, he served continuously as a Legislative Assembly member for five terms over 20 years, until he announced in the 2021 Legislative Assembly election that he would not seek re-election; in terms of participating in social activism, in July 1992, he and Ng Kuok Cheong and others founded the pro-democracy group New Macau Society, with the aim of “establishing a foothold in Macau, studying the state of Macau society, and promoting the region’s modernization and development.” It studied various issues concerning Macau society using professional knowledge and made full use of the powers of Legislative Assembly members to put forward multiple motions concerning people’s livelihoods in Macau and government policy failures, as well as convey residents’ demands. It therefore won broad public support and became one of Macau’s most important pro-democracy associations; several years later, disputes arose within the New Macau Society between the “younger faction,” which advocated actively participating in social movements, and the “veteran faction,” which favored a parliamentary path. In January 2016, he therefore wrote to the society to announce his withdrawal from the organization on the grounds that “the society had departed from the beliefs and founding purpose of that year”; he later formed another political party, “New Power for Macau’s Community Development,” and successfully won re-election as a Legislative Assembly member the following year;

In September 2018, he gave media interviews about the public consultation on the controversial Legal System for the Interception of Communications and the Protection of Communications, questioning whether the police’s monitoring of him had exceeded the law and stating that “under the law, if the police monitor telephone calls, they must first obtain a judge’s approval.” He also said that although he supported strengthening the police’s oversight mechanism, it could only function if it had real investigative powers. His remarks were therefore criticized by Macau’s Secretary for Security without being named; the official said that his relevant remarks were “reckless assertions, wild speculation, and defamatory.” He was later subjected to criminal proceedings by the police over his remarks, becoming the first such case since Macau’s return. The matter therefore quickly sparked heated discussion among the public and online; people were uniformly opposed to the Judiciary Police’s handling of the matter, with almost universal criticism that the approach was unreasonable, while it also stirred dissatisfaction with the local government. In response, a current-affairs commentator said that the public actually needed to pay greater attention to “how to improve oversight mechanisms and information transparency in law, so as to ensure the public’s right to know and residents’ privacy, among other issues”;

On April 8, 2021, at a plenary meeting of the Legislative Assembly, after he mentioned that the amendments to Hong Kong’s electoral system passed by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress were “destroying Hong Kong’s democratic universal suffrage system,” five legislators, including Si Ka Lon, Chan Hong, and Chui Sai Peng, asked him to explain and withdraw his remarks after he made the statement, arguing that what he had said was one-sided and ignored the fact that some people in Hong Kong sought democracy by means of splitting the country; in 2021, under pressure, he announced that he would not participate in the Legislative Assembly election (in fact, he was disqualified from standing after being accused of not being loyal to the Macao SAR), thereby ending his 20-year career as a directly elected Legislative Assembly member.

On July 30, 2025, he was suddenly arrested by the Judiciary Police of Macau on suspicion of violating Article 13 of Macau’s National Security Law, the offense of “establishing contact with organizations, groups, or individuals outside the Macao Special Administrative Region to engage in acts endangering national security,” and was transferred to the Public Prosecution Office the following day for investigation; he was accused of “having allegedly colluded with multiple overseas anti-China organizations since 2022, providing them with a large amount of untrue and inflammatory data for continuous public exhibitions overseas and online,” and, after Macau’s National Security Law took effect in 2023, continuing to use the relevant data to “assist others in collecting or publicly disseminating false and manifestly distorted information, thereby inciting hatred toward the Central People’s Government of China, facilitating hostile actions against China and the Macao SAR by anti-China forces, and undermining elections in the Macao SAR, seriously endangering national security”; when he was arrested, his home was also searched, some of his books were taken away, and his wife, Cheng Miu Shan, was also taken away and later listed as a witness in his case; in response, the European External Action Service immediately issued a statement on August 2 of the same year condemning the Macau government’s arrest of him and criticizing the move for deepening outside concerns that Macau’s political pluralism and freedom of expression were being eroded. He is currently being held at the Macau Detention Centre.