WASHINGTON—U.S. Reps. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) and Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) joined a group of pro-democracy Hong Kong activists to decry the sentencing of 45 political prisoners, imposed under the special administrative region’s draconian Article 23 based on China’s national security law.
“We are outraged about what [Chinese communist leader] Xi Jinping and his cronies are doing with the great people of Hong Kong, who are suffering on their dictatorship,” Smith said at a Nov. 19 press conference outside the Capitol building.
The sentences, imposed on Nov. 19, were the culmination of arrests made in 2020 after citizens of Hong Kong held democratic primary elections in defiance of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Legal scholar Benny Tai, dubbed an “organizer” of the advocates, received the lengthiest sentence of 10 years for “conspiring to commit subversion.”…