Patlin trials

Patlin trials
Mass arraignment of the defendants in Lin Chow County Court on April 24, 1962
Court	Lin Chow County Court
Full case name	Republic of Nakong v Lim Chi-hou et al.
Decided	12 June 1962 (1962-06-12)
Case history
Appealed to	Court of Appeal of Nakong
Subsequent action(s)	Leave to appeal denied, 1962 NKCA 116 (Yip J., dissenting)
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting	Mr Justice Howard Tan (presiding) Mr Justice Chan Mo-chiu Mr Justice Ian Waterford

The Patlin trials (Shangean: 八莲審判) were a series of trials that took place in Patlin, Nakong during the Unionist Crisis in which 46 university students accused of Shangean unionist activity were prosecuted and the majority were executed. The students had been rounded up in a crackdown following a pro-Shangean general strike that paralyzed the city of Patlin and later subjected to beatings and threats to coerce confessions from members of the group. As a result of these confessions, the entire group was prosecuted as members of a criminal enterprise and charged under colonial-era sedition laws for allegedly plotting to overthrow the Nakongese state on behalf of Shangea.

The subsequent trial, held before a three-judge panel of the Lin Chow County Court, was marked by numerous irregularities. Though guaranteed by Nakongese law, a jury trial was not offered to any of the defendants. The presiding judge, Mr Justice Howard Tan, openly castigated the defendants during the proceedings, and defence lawyers were prohibited from raising the issue of coerced confessions. Moreover, key prosecution evidence was not turned over to the defence ahead of the trial and numerous defence exhibits were not admitted into evidence seemingly without reason. Of the 46 defendants, 44 were found guilty by the trial court and sentenced to death, the mandatory sentence for sedition at the time.

A subsequent appeal to the Court of Appeal of Nakong was rejected in a two-paragraph summary disposition by six of the court's seven judges. The sentences of nine female defendants were commuted to life imprisonment, but the remaining 35 were put to death by hanging on 3 December 1962 in the largest mass execution in Nakongese history. The trial and executions inflamed tensions with Shangea and forced the Shangean unionist movement underground, resulting in the East Nakong insurgency. The following year, the Parliament of Nakong enacted the Internal Security Act to criminalize all public expressions of support for unification with Shangea as treason. Justice Tan went on to be appointed to the Court of Appeal himself, serving from 1976 to 1988.

Since the end of the insurgency and the dormancy of the unionist movement, demands to rectify the injustice of the Patlin trials have grown in Nakong. In 2017, Prime Minister Andrew Ng Fan-chiu admitted on behalf of the Nakongese government that the verdicts were "unsound", but stopped short of apologizing to the families of the victims.

Background

Striking bus drivers in Patlin participate in a pro-unification rally in March 1962

Nakong was part of the Shangean Empire from 1402 to 1833, when it was conquered by Estmere following the Embro–Shangean War and became the South Seas Colony. After the occupation and liberation of Nakong during the Great War, demands for Nakongese autonomy grew spearheaded by the Self-Determination Congress. In parallel, a growing movement amongst leftist intellectuals and educated youth, inspired by anti-imperialism, began to embrace Shangean identity as a counterweight to Estmerish colonialism, resulting in the genesis of Shangean unionism. During the joint Gaullican and Shangean occupation of Nakong, many Shangean unionist leaders willingly served in the collaboration government and were subsequently acquitted by sympathetic juries following the war. The movement continued to grow and, in 1953, the All-Nakong Unionist League was established to advocate for immediate reintegration into Shangea at a time when the ruling Self-Determination Congress, which had just achieved self-government with the Nakong Free State, began to eye independence.

After the independence of Nakong was achieved in 1958, unionist unrest broke out across the country. On 2 May 1958 (Independence Day), the Parliament Square bombing in Ningcho killed 7 revellers. Throughout 1958 and 1959, ever-larger unionist protests were observed throughout the country, with pro-Shangean sentiment being particularly strong in the south and southeast of the country. The largest of these unionist protests occurred in September 1960, when rioting students occupied the campus of the National University of Nakong and engaged in deadly clashes with police. Subsequently, the All-Nakong Unionist League was outlawed and its membership dispersed into a series of regional cells and successor organizations.

The largest of these cells was the Patlin cell, which operated out of apartment 7A at 1158 Morwall Road in Patlin City Centre, near the University of Patlin. Founded by expelled student leaders at the Ningcho campus occupation, the cell quickly swelled with recruits from the nearby local university and counted upwards of 80 members by December 1960. The members of the cell were in contact with local unionist worker organizations and Shangean intelligence services and began to organize a general strike to capture global attention to their cause and to create leverage against the government to demand action towards reunification. In the subsequent Patlin general strike (Shangean: 八莲大罢工) between 4 March and 22 March 1962, over 40,000 workers across Lin Chow County and the surrounding regions, including a number of police officers, walked off the job in support of reunification, which greatly alarmed the national government. After unsuccessful negotiations, the Nakong Army was mobilized and suppressed the strike by force, resulting in 92 deaths and over 800 injuries.

Arrest and trial

The Lin Chow County Courthouse, where the Patlin trials took place

A series of indiscriminate mass arrests followed the military's entry into Patlin, with the writ of habeas corpus suspended by the Parliament of Nakong. Aided by informants, local authorities raided apartments known to be used by the Patlin cell and arrested all occupants. Following the raids, over 150 people, largely students at the University of Patlin, were detained. Though the large majority were released after convincing the authorities that they had no relation to unionist activity, 46 suspects were alleged by local magistrates to be strike ringleaders on the basis of inconsistent eyewitness testimony, dubious evidence and hearsay, resulting in their prolonged detention. While detained, they were subject to beatings, threats and constant psychological pressure and at least 10 suspects made coerced confessions, which implicated the entire group.

The local prosecuting magistrate, Frederic Ong, used these confessions to string together a criminal enterprise theory by which all 46 defendants were collectively responsible for the crimes of the group regardless of their individual involvement, and charged the theory as an indictment in Lin Chow County Court on 24 April. Each defendant was charged with one count of sedition, for which the mandatory sentence at the time was the death penalty. Despite Nakongese law recognizing the right to a jury trial, fear of acquittal—as had occurred during the Hiu Lien affair—led the national government to enact an emergency ordinance suspending jury trials in national security cases. Though the three-judge panels in death penalty cases were typically randomly assigned, the chief judge of the county court Mr Justice Howard Tan personally intervened to assign the case to himself and two of his closest associates, Chan Mo-chiu and Ian Waterford. Before joining the bench in 1958, Tan was a local association president in the Self-Determination Congress and a leading voice against unionism.

The trial began on 15 May, before lawyers had been secured for many of the defendants or had the chance to review the details of the case. Throughout the trial, the prosecuting magistrate withheld numerous key exhibits from the defence, while evidence that the defence attempted to admit was repeatedly struck by Mr Justice Tan, sometimes without apparent reason and often sua sponte, which surprised even the prosecutors. At several times during the trial, Mr Justice Tan had emotional outbursts in the courtroom, at one point insulting Ng Ka-leong, a student defendant who attempted to represent himself, as a "foolish little boy", and at another point referring to all the defendants as "traitors" despite them not being on trial for treason. When he learned that several of the defence lawyers had unionist sympathies, he ordered them to salute the Nakongese coat of arms engraved on the bench.

On 12 June, Mr Justice Tan delivered a unanimous verdict on behalf of the panel and found 44 of the 46 defendants guilty of sedition, sentencing them to death as required by law.

Appeal

Immediately upon hearing the sentence, lawyers for all 44 convicted defendants asked the panel for leave to appeal to Nakong's highest court, the Court of Appeal. Mr Justice Tan refused to entertain the motion and told the defendants to "expect a visit from the hangman soon". On 15 June, the defendants asked the Court of Appeal directly for leave to appeal, and a temporary stay of execution was issued the following Monday while the higher court considered their petition.

In popular culture

• The 2023 film Lest Ye Be Judged, which is set to premiere at the 84th Montecara Film Festival, is a fictionalized account of the Patlin trials and its impact on the budding romance of two students who fall on opposite ends of the legal system.