Former Macao lawmaker Au Kam San gets 12 1/2 years

A Macao court found Au guilty of subverting state power, breach of confidentiality and establishing contact with organizations, groups or people outside Macao to commit acts endangering national security, according to a court statement cited by The Independent. The statement said the 69-year-old had for a long period assisted and cooperated with “hostile organizations” outside Macao, collecting and disseminating political views “laden with ideas of subverting state power” and false information. It said he sought to incite hatred against the central government and undermine the country’s fundamental system.

The language is expansive in the familiar way national security language often is. What reads politically as criticism, association and argument is presented legally as subversion and foreign-linked danger. That distinction is the whole case.

The Independent reported that Au’s arrest last year was the first publicly known prosecution under Macao’s national security law since the law was enacted in 2009. That is narrower, and more precise, than saying he was the law’s first actual target. It means this is the first case known in public, and now the first to end in a sentence.

Au was not an obscure defendant. He served for 20 years in Macao’s legislature before stepping down in 2021, in a body The Independent described as dominated by Beijing loyalists. Before his arrest, he was also one of the city’s rare regular critics of government measures and political development, though the same report noted many people regarded his critiques as mild.

The process itself drew concern. The trial was held behind closed doors. The court said an open hearing could undermine national security interests and said the decision followed a request from the Public Prosecutions Office and confirmation from the city’s national security committee, led by Chief Executive Sam Hou Fai. Earlier, the court said Au would be represented by a court-appointed lawyer whom authorities said he had approved and that his rights were ensured by law.

Au’s daughter, Au Hon I, previously told the Associated Press, as quoted by The Independent, that a lawyer found by the family was not allowed to see him in prison and that the family could not speak with him for almost a year.

Critics cited by The Independent said the case reflected Beijing’s emphasis on security and intolerance of dissent, even in Macao, where the pro-democracy movement has never carried the force it did in neighboring Hong Kong. Macao remains a special administrative region with its own legal and political systems, and also the only Chinese city where casino gambling is legal. None of that insulated one of its best-known dissenting figures from a prosecution the authorities framed as a threat to the state.