Hong Kong: over-the-top punishment for 2019 democracy protesters, report finds

More than 10,000 arrests and nearly 3,000 prosecutions, with 82% given jail including extraordinary high' proportion of children

Protesters involved in the 2019-2020 pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong have been treated extraordinarily harshly by the criminal justice system compared with local and international norms, a report has found.

The surge in arrests, detentions and charges in the wake of the anti-extradition bill protests that saw millions of Hongkongers taking to the streets to oppose closer ties with mainland China meant that the criminal justice system was put under extreme stress", according to Jun Chan, Eric Yan-ho Lai and Thomas E Kellogg at the Center for Asian Law of Georgetown University.