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3h ago

Hong Kong Court Convicts Tiananmen Vigil Leaders of Inciting Subversion

Rights groups call the ruling a criminalization of peaceful remembrance with mitigation hearings set before sentencing later this month.

FILE - Fom left, pro-democracy activists Lee Cheuk-yan, Chow Hang-tung, and Cheung Man-kwong attend a gathering to mourn for those killed in the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown at Victoria Park, in Hong Kong on June 4, 2020. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File)
FILE - In this two photo combination image, at top thousands of people attend the annual candlelight vigil in Hong Kong's Victoria Park, June 4, 2019 to mark the anniversary of the military crackdown on the 1989 pro-democracy student movement in Beijing, and bottom shows the same venue taken over by a carnival organized by pro-Beijing groups to mark the city's 1997 handover to China on the 34th anniversary of the crackdown, June 4, 2023. (AP Photo, File)
FILE - Then legislator Lee Cheuk-yan, one of the pro-democracy activists from the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, is taken away by police officers at a Hong Kong shopping mall on May 29, 2010 when they displayed a 6.4-meter-tall statue depicting the Goddess of Democracy, top, at a shopping mall without permission. (AP Photo, File) ** HONG KONG OUT **

Overview

  • A three-judge national security panel found Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung guilty of inciting subversion on Friday, closing a 24-day trial that began in January.
  • The judges said the alliance’s repeated slogan "end one-party dictatorship" showed an intent to undermine the Communist Party and thus breached the 2020 National Security Law.
  • Lee and Chow face up to 10 years in prison and the court has scheduled mitigation hearings, with sentencing expected after those hearings later this month.
  • The pair led the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance, which organised annual Victoria Park vigils for three decades until public remembrances were banned in 2020.
  • Human rights groups and legal scholars warned the verdict deepens concerns about the narrowing of dissent and the use of broadly framed security offences and government-approved judges to police speech.