Macau's first national security case opened behind closed doors on Wednesday (September 16). The defendant was pro-democracy leader Ou Kam-xin. He was charged with "subversion of state power" and other charges and faced up to 25 years in prison.
The 69-year-old Ou Jinxin has served as a member of the Legislative Council for 20 years and is also the organizer of Macau’s June 4th commemoration activities.
His case was not made public after it entered court proceedings. Ou Jinxin's daughter once said that she had been unable to contact her father for nearly a year and asked the authorities to allow family visits.
On the day of the trial, the media was shut out of the court, and the outside world could only wait for government press releases to obtain information, which was even more closed than Hong Kong's national security cases.
Jorge Menezes, a Portuguese lawyer who has practiced in Macau for many years, described to BBC Chinese that this trial was "new" and very thorough. "I have never seen the defendant's family unable to meet the defendant and did not know the name of his lawyer; I have never seen a case where even the trial schedule is regarded as a state secret."
The Macau Court's online electronic notice will update trial case information every day, listing the defendants, court dates and trial locations. On September 16, the electronic notice did not display Ou Jinxin’s interrogation information.
Five days before the start of the trial, the Macau Lower Court announced that the judge presiding over the case, at the request of the Procuratorate and confirmed by the Committee for the Maintenance of National Security of the Macau SAR, decided to hear the relevant cases behind closed doors in order to ensure that no damage was caused to national security interests in accordance with Article 9, Paragraph 2 of Law No. 9/1999, "Outline Law on Judicial Organization".
This is the first time a national security case has been tried in closed court in Macau. The outside world knows very little about this closed trial, such as who is Ou Jinxin’s lawyer and who is the judge in charge of the trial.
Portuguese lawyer Ho Ruizhi told BBC Chinese that the closed trial is a tactic. "It prevents the media from seeing the evidence, it prevents the public from seeing the person, and it also prevents foreign governments from having any specific things to object to."
He questioned that the closed-door trial was not for the sake of justice and the rule of law. "Darkness will erase the traces of injustice."
In the past, Ho Ruizhi served as defense counsel for former democratic congressman Su Jiahao in political cases and democratic candidates who were disqualified from running. He described this case as the most political case in Macau's history, and reporters and public surveillance were deliberately removed.
Current media reports rely on official announcements of the progress of the case. For example, the Lower Court announced on July 9 this year that the Criminal Prosecution Court had conducted a preliminary hearing on July 2. The preliminary judge had issued a special permission for the suspect to continue his defense with a lawyer appointed by the court that had been recognized earlier. The announcement stated that the suspect's legal rights were "guaranteed in accordance with the law."
Ou Jinxin was arrested on July 30, 2025, and has been detained for more than a year.
He was charged with "subversion of state power," "contacting with foreign organizations to endanger national security," and "violation of confidentiality," and faces up to 25 years in prison.
British barrister Michael Polak is Ou Jinxin's overseas legal representative. In July this year, he quoted Ou Jinxin's daughter Ou Hanyi as saying that she had been unable to contact her father for nearly a year and missed him every day. Her only request now is a fair trial.
Ou Hanyi said that his father's more than 30 years of service to the people of Macau should not be erased or forgotten, and emphasized that family members should be allowed to visit or contact Ou Jinxin.
The Associated Press published an interview with Ou Hanyi in July this year. She is in London and said that she is still unable to discuss the case with Ou Jinxin and cannot provide him with a lawyer.
The Macau Judicial Police issued a press release last year stating that there are strong signs that Au Kam-hsin has long been colluding with foreign hostile forces. By colluding with each other and assisting others to collect or openly disseminating false and obviously distorted information, he has acted alone or jointly to cause others to hate the Central People's Government, promote anti-China forces to take hostile actions against China and the Macau SAR, and undermine the elections of the Macau SAR, seriously endangering national security.
Ou Jinxin was originally a primary school teacher. He has served as a Macau Municipal Councilor since 1993. He was elected to the Legislative Council for the first time in 2001 and has been successfully re-elected since then. In 2021, he announced that he would not participate in the Legislative Council election, ending his 20-year career as a Legislative Council member. After leaving parliament, he continued to criticize current affairs in Macau, such as focusing on the disqualification of candidates and commenting on the 2024 Macau chief executive election.
As a representative of Macau's pro-democracy faction, the "Macau Joint Committee for Democratic Development", of which he serves as chairman, holds commemorative events for June 4th every year until it stops in 2022. In 2023, the organization applied for dissolution.
Lawyer Ho Ruizhi analyzed that Ou Jinxin’s case will become a model for future national security cases in Macau, and the impact is not limited to criminal cases.
This is because Macau passed an amendment in March this year to extend designated judges and closed hearings to civil and administrative litigation "involving national security." Ho Ruizhi bluntly said that after the Au Kam Sin case, the Macau authorities no longer need to arrest anyone, which is enough to silence people.
In September, the Hong Kong High Court found the Hong Kong Alliance guilty of "inciting subversion of power" and the three defendants were sentenced to 5 years and 2 months to 7 years and 3 months in prison respectively.
Au Kam-hsin has been one of the organizers of Macau's annual "June 4th" commemoration activities in the past. Ho Ruizhi believes that the sentence faced by Ou Jinxin will not be lower than that of the defendant in the Hong Kong Stake Association case.
Ho Ruizhi pointed out that it is also a national security case, but people in Hong Kong can still read reports about the court scene. "In Macau, what you read is a government press release."
