“It’s really sad,” said a close friend of one of the defendants, who gave his name as Mr Chan.
“It’s very difficult for a lot of Hong Kong people seeing politicians, who are trying to do whatever they can within the legal framework, but who have been put into jail because of these so-called security arrangements.”
Members of the Hong Kong 47 include former elected officials, activists, journalists, trades union representatives, academics, social workers, and businessmen, some of whom have been persistent thorns in the side of Beijing.
Benny Tai, a legal academic and a ringleader of the Umbrella movement which occupied streets in central commercial areas of Hong Kong and Kowloon nearly a decade ago, received the harshest sentence of 10 years.
Other prominent figures sentenced included former teenage activist Joshua Wong, veteran legislative council members like Claudia Mo, a former journalist, and Leung Kwok-hung, a firebrand politician who frequently goes by the nickname “Long Hair”.