Tiananmen vigil group leaders face jail after conviction

Hong Kong’s High Court on Friday convicted two former leaders of a disbanded group that organised annual vigils marking Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Once legal in China-ruled Hong Kong, the public commemorations were hailed as a symbol of the Asian financial hub’s relative freedom, compared to mainland China.

Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, and Chow Hang-tung, 41, were charged with “inciting subversion of state power”. The charge carries punishment of up to 10 years in jail under a China-imposed national security law (NSL).

They were former chair and former vice-chair, respectively, of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China.

The judgment issued by three government-approved national security judges said it was the defendants’ repeated if peaceful use of the phrase “end one-party dictatorship” rather than other political actions or beliefs that had breached the NSL.

The defendants “intended to cause others to lose confidence in the CCP by stirring up hostility and causing division to achieve the objective of undermining the fundamental basic system”, the judges said in a 16-page ruling, referring to China’s ruling Communist Party.

The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and crackdown marked a pivotal turning point in modern Chinese history, where hundreds to thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators were killed, transforming the site into an enduring global symbol of resistance against political repression

“Even though they believed and envisaged the acts of resistance may not necessarily involve the use of violence or threat of violence, those acts would be in breach of the NSL, and carry a risk of long-term imprisonment.”

The NSL was implemented in 2020, significantly expanding the powers of the Chinese and Hong Kong governments within Hong Kong after months of sometimes violent pro-democracy protests that rocked the Asian financial hub in 2019.

Another former chair of the group and also a former chair of the city’s largest opposition Democratic Party, Albert Ho, 74, had pleaded guilty to the same charge.

The alliance had for decades led annual commemorations in Hong Kong of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing, until the enactment of the NSL in 2020.

Lee and Ho have been detained since 2021. Mitigation hearings are due to start later this month.

Reuters