Former Hong Kong opposition lawmaker Claudia Mo has made her first public comment about her “prison experience,” days after she was released from jail.
“My prison experience… Prison life was surreal, almost Kafka-esque to start with,” Mo wrote in a Facebook post on Friday. “But I didn’t suffer the two major incarceration traumas, loneliness and boredom, thanks to the social arrangements inside.”
She said she had read over 300 books and picked up her French during her custody.
Mo also posted a photo of herself on Facebook, saying that it was taken hours after she was released from the Lo Wu Correctional Institution early Tuesday morning. The picture shows her at home standing in front of a banner reading: “Welcome Home Mum,” appearing more weathered than in her last public appearance.
Mo – who was a journalist before she embarked on politics – also thanked her friends and family, naming in particular Cardinal Joseph Zen, press freedom NGO Reporters Without Borders, and the recently disbanded minority rights group Unison.
She also said: “My thoughts are with my co-defendants who remain in custody.”
Mo, fellow ex-lawmakers Jeremy Tam, Kwok Ka-ki, and Gary Fan were the first batch of 45 jailed democrats to be released from prison after being sentenced in the city’s largest national security trial, which concluded in November.
All four were escorted out of prison before sunrise on Tuesday in police vehicles with curtains drawn.
The four pro-democracy figures were sentenced to four years and two months in jail after pleading guilty to a subversion charge for their role in an unofficial primary election organised by the city’s pro-democracy camp in July 2020.
The four had been kept in custody since late February 2021, when their police bail was revoked.
Aleksandra Bielakowska, advocacy officer of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), told HKFP on Friday that Mo was a “press freedom defender” they had advocated for.
“In the past she was one of the biggest defenders of press freedom… we really wanted to support her as she was [a] leading figure to support all reporters in the past,” she said.
Hong Kong 47
Hong Kong charged 47 opposition figures, including Mo and some of the city’s best-known democrats, with subversion under a Beijing-imposed national security law in 2021.
Authorities accused the group of conspiring to subvert state power by organising an unofficial primary that aimed to seize an opposition-controlled majority in the city’s legislature, which would allow the pro-democracy camp to veto the government budget for political demands.
Three handpicked national security judges ruled last year that the scheme would create a “constitutional crisis” and convicted 45 out of the 47 democrats, sentencing them to prison terms ranging from four years and two months to 10 years.
The majority of the group have been held in custody since February 28, 2021, when they were charged with the offence.
Nine more are expected to be released from prison this year, including LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham and ex-district councillor Tiffany Yuen.
Beijing inserted national security legislation directly into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution in June 2020 following a year of pro-democracy protests and unrest. It criminalised subversion, secession, collusion with foreign forces and terrorist acts – broadly defined to include disruption to transport and other infrastructure. The move gave police sweeping new powers and led to hundreds of arrests amid new legal precedents, while dozens of civil society groups disappeared. The authorities say it restored stability and peace to the city, rejecting criticism from trade partners, the UN and NGOs.
