Benny Tai

In April 2019, Tai was found guilty of conspiracy to cause public nuisance and inciting others to cause public nuisance. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison, but was released on bail on August 15.

In April 2019, Tai was found guilty of conspiracy to cause public nuisance and inciting others to cause public nuisance. He was sentenced to 16 months in prison.

Tai was condemned by Beijing’s mouthpieces in Hong Kong for several days in a row, followed by a rare statement of condemnation from the Hong Kong government. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office (HKMAO) and the Liaison Office also issued strongly worded comments condemning Tai, stating that a "small number of people in Hong Kong have colluded with external separatist forces" to advocate the city’s independence. "They have fully exposed their attempts to split the country and violated the national constitution, the Hong Kong Basic Law, and the relevant laws in Hong Kong. They are challenging the bottom line of 'one country, two systems'. Such activities must not be ignored or tolerated." Hong Kong member of the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) Tam Yiu-chung urged Hong Kong to urgently implement Article 23 of the Basic Law to criminalise a series of acts including sedition, treason and subversion. He also asked if it was still appropriate for him to keep his job at HKU. All pro-Beijing legislators also issued a joint statement against the national constitution and the Basic Law. Several pro-Beijing protesters staged a protest outside the University of Hong Kong's law faculty building urging management to sack Tai.

In a seminar in Taipei organised by the Taiwan Youth Anti-Communist Corps in March 2018, Tai was recorded making an argument that following the end of "dictatorship" in China, the country’s various ethnic groups could exercise their right to self-determination and decide how they could link up with each other. "We could consider going independent, being part of a federal system or a confederation system similar to that of the European Union," he said.

In March 2017, he and eight other Occupy leaders were arrested on the rare charges of conspiracy to cause public nuisance, inciting others to cause public nuisance, and inciting people to incite others to cause public nuisance. University of Hong Kong principal law lecturer Eric Cheung Tat-ming and criminal defence lawyer Jonathan Midgley described the charges as "not at all common".

In April 2017, Tai proposed the "Project Storm" to win the majority of the District Council seats for the pro-democrats in the next election in 2019. He stated that by winning a majority of the some 400 District Council seats, pro-democrats could gain an additional 117 seats of the District Council subsectors on the 1,200-member Election Committee which elects the Chief Executive. Tai believed that by making it harder for Beijing to manipulate in the Chief Executive election, it would compel Beijing to restart the stalled political reform after its restrictive proposal was voted down in 2015.

After the protests, he also launched the "Operation ThunderGo" in the 2016 Legislative Council election, a "smart voter" mechanism aiming at getting the most pro-democracy candidates elected to the Legislative Council. He also initiated "Project Storm" for the pro-democrats to win the majority in the coming 2019 District Council election. In March 2018, he received all-round attacks from the Beijing and Hong Kong governments, the pro-Beijing media and politicians for his remarks on Hong Kong independence.

In early 2016, Tai mapped out an "Operation ThunderGo" for pan-democrats to grab half of the seats in the Legislative Council election to increase political leverage in future political reform in the response to the increasing fragmentation of the pan-democracy camp in the post-Occupy era. He suggests the anti-establishment forces to field no more than 23 lists if their goal was to win 23 seats in the geographical constituencies. For the functional constituencies, Tai suggested that besides retaining the current six trade-based functional constituencies and three territory-wide directly elected District Council (Second) super seats, the camp needs to target three additional seats in Medical, Engineering and Architectural, Surveying, Planning and Landscape. The plan met with reservations from the very diverse interests within pro-democracy political parties, who could not agree on a united front. Tai's plan hit its setback when the Neo Democrats decided not to support the proposed coordinating mechanism for the District Council (Second) super seats in May.

In response to the decision on constitutional reform proposal of the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) which set the restrictive framework on the electoral method of the 2017 Chief Executive election, Tai announced the official start of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace civil disobedience campaign on 28 September 2014 after the student activists' storming of the forecourt of the government headquarters led by Joshua Wong on the last day of the class boycott campaign.

As the occupation ended its first month, Benny Tai and Chan Kin-man resumed their teaching duties at their respective universities and OCLP handed over the command of its medic, marshal and supplies teams to the student groups, the Hong Kong Federation of Students and Scholarism. On 3 December 2014, the Occupy Central trio, along with 62 others key figures turned themselves in to the police, admitting taking part in an unauthorised assembly as originally planned. They did so to fulfil their promise to bear legal responsibility and uphold the rule of law, as well as to affirm their principles of love and peace.

On 16 January 2013, Tai wrote an article entitled "Civil Disobedience's Deadliest Weapon" on Hong Kong Economic Journal which sparked public debate. In the article, Tai postulated a non-violent civil disobedience seven-step progression to pressure the Hong Kong government to implement genuine full democracy: 10,000 participants signing a declaration (taking a vow and pledge of willingness to occupy the streets), live TV broadcast of discussions, electronic voting on methods for universal suffrage, a referendum on the preferred formula, resignation of a "super-seat" Legislative Council member to be filled in a by-election to be seen as a referendum on the plan, civil disobedience, and, finally, Occupy Central in July 2014 if the plan was rejected by the Beijing government.

He and sociology scholar Dr. Chan Kin-man and pro-democracy priest Reverend Chu Yiu-ming founded the Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP) on 27 March 2013. The plan was supported by the pan-democracy camp and rounds of deliberations were held among the Occupy participants from 2013 to 2014 before an referendum on the electoral reform proposal in June 2014. The plan was strongly condemned by the Beijing authorities, accusing Tai and other organisers were "a small minority of extremists" suggesting the Occupy plan with "ulterior motive" lay in "interference from foreign forces" in a publication of the state-owned Global Times. He also received death threats.

He joined the Faculty of Law of the University of Hong Kong in 1990. He became an Assistant Professor in 1991 and an Associate Professor in 2001. He was also the Associate Dean of the law faculty from 2000 to 2008. He specialised in constitutional law, administrative law, law and governance, law and politics and law and religion.

He has also been active in promoting civic education in the community. He served on the Hong Kong Basic Law Consultative Committee as a student representative from 1988 to 1990 and was a member of the Committee on the Promotion of Civil Education and the Bilingual Laws Advisory Committee from 1995 to 2003. He was also a part-time member of the Hong Kong government's Central Policy Unit in 2007.

Benny Tai Yiu-ting, MH (Chinese: 戴耀廷 ; born 12 July 1964) is a Hong Kong legal scholar and democracy activist. He is an Associate Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong and is known for his initiation of the Occupy Central with Love and Peace, a non-violent civil disobedience campaign to pressure the Hong Kong government to implement full democracy in 2014, which turned into the massive pro-democracy protests.