The Hong Kong police on Sunday announced prosecutions against nearly 50 members of the pro-democracy movement for “sabotage”, the largest group indicted on the same day in the name of national security legislation.

The indictments come a month after a massive crackdown in which 55 people were arrested, including some of the most well-known of the pro-democracy movement.

Police said on Sunday that 47 had been charged with “conspiring to sabotage security”, one of the qualifications covered by the National Security Act that Beijing had seen in the months that rocked the city in 2019. Hong Kong was imposed in response. .

The former British colony then went through its worst political crisis since its handing over to China in 1997.

And Beijing last year made a muscular acquisition of its theoretically semi-autonomous region.

This was significantly catalyzed by the new law imposed in late June 2020 without debate by the Legislative Council of Hong Kong (Legoco) and tackles four types of crime: sabotage, solitude, terrorism and foreign forces. Collusion.

These indictments carry life imprisonment.

Those featured on Sunday represent a very wide spectrum of local opposition, with veteran former MPs such as James Two and Claudia Moe, academics, lawyers, social workers and many youth activists.