Macau jails former lawmaker Au Kam San for 12½ years in its first national security trial
Au Kam San, 69, co-organised the Tiananmen vigils that Macau once tolerated. On Friday, a court sitting behind closed doors made him the first person convicted under the territory's widened security laws.
Published 6 November 2026 · 06:15 GMT
The summary
Macau's Court of First Instance sentenced former lawmaker Au Kam San, 69, to 12 years and six months in prison on Friday 6 November 2026, for subversion and other offences. Au is the first person convicted under Macau's national security laws since they were widened in 2023, and his arrest was the first publicly known prosecution under the law since it was enacted in 2009.
The three lenses
- WestHow the West reads it In the West, the story arrives as a question of rights and of fairness, because Reuters and the Associated Press both lead with the closed doors and the first-trial fact, and both place the verdict beside Hong Kong's sentencing of Joshua Wong the day before.
- EastHow the East reads it In the East, the story is reported as a legal event with a docket and a sentence, because the South China Morning Post and the Macau Daily Times both work from the court statement, with the charges counted, the penalty ranges set out, and the sentence assembled piece by piece.
- Global SouthHow the Global South reads it In the Global South, the story is reported through the history that made it, because The Hindu leads with the fact that Au co-organised the annual vigils for the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, and frames the sentence as the closing of a space that Macau and Hong Kong alone had kept open under Chinese rule.
Key facts
- Macau's Court of First Instance sentenced former lawmaker Au Kam San, 69, to 12 years and six months in prison on Friday 6 November 2026, for subversion and other offences. The Hindu
- Au is the first person convicted under Macau's national security laws since they were widened in 2023, and his arrest was the first publicly known prosecution under the law since it was enacted in 2009. The Hindu
- The court found him guilty on five of seven charges, subversion of state power, two counts of establishing links with foreign groups, and breach of secrecy, and acquitted him on two further subversion counts. South China Morning Post
- The sentence was built from 11 years and three months for subversion, three years and nine months for each of the two foreign-links offences, and nine months for breach of secrecy, combined into a single term. Macau Daily Times
- Au was arrested in July 2025 and tried behind closed doors, with hearings on 16 and 18 September 2026; the indictment was filed on 27 March 2026 and the charges were confirmed on 2 July. Macau Daily Times
- Au co-organised the annual vigils for the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, which Macau and Hong Kong alone tolerated under Chinese rule; the European Union condemned his arrest in 2025. The Straits Times
What did a Macau court decide on Friday morning?
A court in Macau sentenced former lawmaker and democracy campaigner Au Kam San to twelve years and six months in prison on Friday 6 November 2026, in the Chinese territory's first national security trial. The Court of First Instance found the 69-year-old guilty of subversion, foreign links and breaching secrecy, acquitting him on two further subversion counts. It is the first conviction under the laws widened in 2023, and the first prosecution under a law enacted in 2009 that had never been used. In custody since July 2025, Au was tried behind closed doors in September, on the 16th and the 18th. It comes a day after Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong received ten years for collusion, and it closes a chapter Macau had kept open for decades, as the city was, with Hong Kong, the only place under Chinese rule where the Tiananmen vigils were tolerated.
Who is Au Kam San, and what was he accused of doing?
Au Kam San, 69, sat in Macau's Legislative Assembly as a pro-democracy lawmaker and campaigned for years as one of the territory's best-known democracy activists, and the case against him was built on what the court said he did between 2023 and 2024. According to the court statement reported by the Macau Daily Times, he worked with several overseas organisations to collect and distribute information the prosecution called false or distorted, aiming to prompt foreign governments to act against China and Macau and to disrupt the election of the territory's sixth-term Chief Executive. The indictment was filed on 27 March 2026, and the charges were confirmed on 2 July. The sentence was assembled piece by piece: eleven years and three months for subversion, three years and nine months for each of the two foreign-links offences, and nine months for breach of secrecy, combined into a single term of twelve years and six months. Subversion carries ten to twenty-five years, foreign links three to ten, and the court noted that although Au was a first-time offender who had admitted much of the conduct, his intent was extremely high.
What did the closed courtroom keep from view?
The trial was held behind closed doors, and that single fact shapes everything we cannot yet say, because no transcript, no public record and no account of the evidence has been published. The court refused an open trial to protect national security interests, at the prosecutors' request and with confirmation from the national security committee led by Chief Executive Sam Hou Fai, so the public knows the verdict but not what was shown to the judge. We do not know whether Au will appeal, since no appeal has been reported, nor what the two acquitted counts contained, or why the court found the evidence for them insufficient while finding the rest proven. We do not know when his family will be allowed to see him: Justice Abroad said in July that his wife and three daughters have had no contact with him since shortly after his detention. Nor do we know whether a second prosecution will follow, which would show whether this verdict is a warning or the first of a series.
Why does one sentence in Macau reach beyond the territory?
Macau's security law existed on paper for seventeen years without a single prosecution, and the widening of 2023 gave it new offences and sharper teeth, so this verdict is the moment the law stopped being a deterrent on the shelf and became a sentence in a courtroom. The timing matters as much as the law, because the sentence came a day after Hong Kong's Joshua Wong received ten years for collusion, and the two verdicts bind the two special administrative regions into a single story about how dissent is now treated across Chinese-ruled territory. For Beijing, the message is deterrence, since the foreign-links offence reaches anyone who shares information with organisations outside the territory. For the European Union, which condemned the 2025 arrest as eroding political pluralism, the verdict tests whether statements carry consequences once a twelve-and-a-half-year sentence exists to answer. And for the people of Macau, the case touches a memory once public and shared: the Tiananmen vigils were held openly for decades, and Au helped to organise them, so the sentence reclassifies the city's own history as subversion.
How does the verdict fit the security laws Macau widened in 2023?
The verdict fits the widened law with a precision that is itself the story, because the 2009 law was a framework with no cases, while the 2023 revisions added the offence that now does the heavy work: establishing links with foreign groups to commit acts endangering national security. That offence, carrying three to ten years, turns contact with the outside world into a crime, and the court used it twice against Au alongside the older subversion charge, which carries ten to twenty-five years, so the sentence was built from an old offence and a new one. The procedure fits the same architecture: the closed trial was requested by the prosecutors and confirmed by a committee chaired by the Chief Executive, so the executive decides openness, and the public must trust a verdict it cannot inspect. Hong Kong's security law, imposed by Beijing in 2020, produced a wave of prosecutions, while Macau wrote its own law in 2009 and waited seventeen years to use it, so the difference between the two cities was timing rather than direction. China's political leadership has spent the year consolidating its grip at home while pressing its neighbours, and Beijing has warned Manila's politicians against crossing its red lines, so the Macau verdict belongs to a wider pattern in which the centre tightens control wherever its writ runs.
What happens if Macau's security law now has a precedent?
A precedent lowers the cost of the next prosecution, because the first case is the hard one and the second is routine. Prosecutors who once had to weigh whether to be the first to use a seventeen-year-old law now have a twelve-and-a-half-year sentence to point to, a court statement to quote, and a procedure, closed doors, committee confirmation, consolidated sentence, that has already been tested. Civic groups in Macau must now weigh the foreign-links offence before they share information with partners abroad, and the chilling effect needs no second trial, because the first has redrawn the boundary of what is safe. The conduct, from 2023 and 2024, also signals that the risk is retrospective: the law reaches activity long before the arrest. Internationally, the verdict forces a choice on governments that condemned the arrest, because a statement issued in 2025 costs nothing while a response to a sentence in 2026 is measured against trade, diplomacy and the rest of the relationship with Beijing.
What should we watch for in the coming days?
First, whether Au appeals and on what grounds, and whether any appeal is heard in public, because an open hearing would be the first public airing of a closed case. Second, whether his family is allowed contact after more than a year without it, since the authorities' answer will say a great deal about how the sentence is meant to be served. Third, the international response, and above all the European Union's next statement, because Brussels condemned the arrest in 2025 and must now decide whether a verdict changes the weight of its words. Fourth, whether Macau's prosecutors open a second national security case, since the first case is a template and the test of a template is whether it is used again. Fifth, the reaction inside Macau itself, where the vigils once drew crowds and the law now calls that history subversion.
The three lenses
West Lens:
How the West reads it In the West, the story arrives as a question of rights and of fairness, because Reuters and the Associated Press both lead with the closed doors and the first-trial fact, and both place the verdict beside Hong Kong's sentencing of Joshua Wong the day before. The Western lens is the trial itself: a former lawmaker, a seventeen-year-old law used for the first time, a court the public could not watch, and twelve and a half years for conduct that included organising vigils for the dead of Tiananmen. The European Union's condemnation of the arrest in 2025 is quoted as the standing Western position, and the question in Western capitals is whether a verdict now exists that demands more than words.
East Lens:
How the East reads it In the East, the story is reported as a legal event with a docket and a sentence, because the South China Morning Post and the Macau Daily Times both work from the court statement, with the charges counted, the penalty ranges set out, and the sentence assembled piece by piece. The Eastern lens is the procedure: the indictment filed on 27 March, the charges confirmed on 2 July, the hearings on 16 and 18 September, and the first prosecution since the territory returned to Chinese rule in 1999. The Straits Times adds the institutional facts, including the European Union's condemnation and the family's lack of contact, without adopting either side's framing.
South Lens:
How the Global South reads it In the Global South, the story is reported through the history that made it, because The Hindu leads with the fact that Au co-organised the annual vigils for the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, and frames the sentence as the closing of a space that Macau and Hong Kong alone had kept open under Chinese rule. The Southern lens is the vigil itself: a public act of memory, held openly for decades in a former Portuguese colony that reverted to China in 1999, now reclassified by a court as subversion, with the man who helped to organise it sentenced to twelve and a half years. The New Indian Express carries the same wire account with the emphasis on fairness, noting that the closed-door trial raised concerns about how the verdict was reached.
The consensus
- What we agree on
- What we agree on: Macau's Court of First Instance sentenced Au Kam San, 69, to 12 years and six months in prison on 6 November 2026; he was convicted on five of seven charges, including subversion of state power and establishing links with foreign groups, and acquitted on two further subversion counts; the trial was held behind closed doors in September, and this is the first conviction under the national security laws widened in 2023.
- What we don't agree on
- What we disagree on: whether the proceedings were a fair application of the law or a political verdict delivered behind closed doors, and whether Au's work with overseas organisations was subversion or lawful dissent. The court held that he assisted hostile external organisations in spreading subversive material; the European Union, which condemned his arrest in 2025, reads the case as an erosion of political pluralism in Macau.
- What we know
- What we know: the sentence and how it was built, the dates of the arrest, the indictment and the hearings, the charges and the acquittals, the penalty ranges in the law, and the fact that Macau's security law sat unused for 17 years before this prosecution. We know Au co-organised the Tiananmen vigils and that his family has had no contact with him since shortly after his detention.
- What we don't know yet
- What we do not know: what evidence the closed court heard, because no transcript or public record of the hearings exists; whether Au will appeal, since no appeal has been reported; what the two acquitted counts contained; and whether the authorities intend a second prosecution, which would show whether this verdict is a template or a one-off.
- What we expect
- What we expect: an appeal, if one comes, to test whether any part of the case is ever heard in public; fresh statements from the European Union and other governments now that a verdict exists to respond to; and close attention to whether Macau's prosecutors open a second national security case, because the first case sets the pattern and the second one proves it.
Questions, answered
Who is Au Kam San?
Au Kam San, 69, is a former member of Macau's Legislative Assembly and one of the territory's best-known pro-democracy campaigners. For years he co-organised the annual vigils for the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, an event Macau and Hong Kong were long the only places under Chinese rule to tolerate. He was arrested in July 2025 and has been in custody ever since.
What was he convicted of?
The Court of First Instance found him guilty on five of seven charges: subversion of state power, two counts of establishing links with foreign groups or individuals to commit acts endangering national security, and breach of secrecy. He was acquitted on two further counts of subversion, for which the court found the evidence insufficient. The combined sentence is twelve years and six months.
Why is this trial a first for Macau?
Macau enacted its national security law in 2009, but no one had ever been prosecuted under it until Au's arrest in July 2025. The law was widened in 2023, adding the foreign-links offence at the heart of this case. Au is therefore both the first person prosecuted under the law and the first convicted under its widened version, which is why the verdict sets a precedent.
What happens next?
No appeal has been reported so far, and the first thing to watch is whether Au challenges the verdict and whether any appeal is heard in public. The second is his family: according to the organisation Justice Abroad, his wife and three daughters have had no contact with him since shortly after his detention. The third is whether prosecutors open a second national security case.
Sources
- The Hindu
- South China Morning Post
- Macau Daily Times
- The Straits Times