Hong Kong ex lawmaker Claudia Mo calls prison experience surreal

HONG KONG – A former Hong Kong pro-democracy lawmaker on May 2 recounted her “surreal” experience being jailed for more than four years under the city’s national security law.

Ms Claudia Mo, 68, was among the 45 Hong Kong opposition figures imprisoned in the city’s largest national security case after they held an informal election in 2020 that the authorities deemed a “conspiracy to subvert the state power”.

Ms Mo and former lawmakers Jeremy Tam, Kwok Ka-ki and Gary Fan were each released on April 29 after completing a jail term of four years and two months – the first batch of defendants to regain their freedom.

“Many thanks for all the concern and care expressed upon my release,” Ms Mo wrote on Facebook on May 2. “Prison life was surreal, almost Kafka-esque to start with,” she added.

“But I didn’t suffer the two major incarceration traumas, loneliness and boredom, thanks to the social arrangements inside.”

She posted a photo “taken (a) couple hours after getting home from prison” that showed her in front of a banner reading “welcome home mum”.

The former lawmaker thanked her family and friends, including Cardinal Joseph Zen, Reporters Without Borders and the now-shuttered minority rights group Hong Kong Unison.

“My thoughts are with my co-defendants who remain in custody,” she said.

Beijing imposed a sweeping national security law on Hong Kong in 2020 following huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests in the finance hub.

The court in 2024 jailed 45 pro-democracy figures under that law, including some of Hong Kong’s best-known activists and figures from across the city’s once-diverse political spectrum.

Ms Mo and the three other Hong Kong democrats released on April 29 had pleaded guilty, which led to a reduced sentence.

She said in her Facebook post on May 2 that she