Hong Kong court hands stiff jail sentences to Tiananmen vigil activists 

A Hong Kong court has sentenced three activists to five to seven years in prison for their roles in organising a vigil marking the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, and Chow Hang-tung, 41, were both sentenced on Friday to seven years for inciting subversion. Albert Ho, 74, was sentenced to five years and two months, having pleaded guilty in January.

The United Nations, rights groups, and foreign governments condemned the convictions under the draconian national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong following huge pro-democracy protests in 2020, which has suppressed civil liberties in the city that previously enjoyed greater freedoms than in mainland China.

Judges highlighted that the defendants, part of a group that organised annual commemorations marking Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, had breached the Chinese constitution by calling for an “end to one-party dictatorship”.

The verdict read that although the case did not involve violence, and the defendants had not put forward a timetable for that objective, their offence was still of “a serious nature”.

The court judgement added that the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China faces a fine of 1.5 million Hong Kong dollars ($191,000).

Lee is the former chair of the Hong Kong Alliance. Chow is a former vice-chair. Both have been in custody since pleading not guilty in 2021.

Ho is another former ⁠chair of the vigil group and was a leading figure in the opposition Democratic Party. The sentences are expected to include time already served.

Public commemorations of the 1989 civil unrest used to be legal and tolerated in Hong Kong and were seen as a symbol of ⁠the city’s relative freedoms compared with mainland China.

However, they were outlawed in 2020 when the National Security Law came into force after mass protests in 2019, when the last vigil took place.

Lee’s wife Elizabeth Tang told the Reuters news agency that he would “definitely appeal” his sentence. Chow, a barrister who represented herself, told a hearing last month that she had “nothing to repent for”.

Taiwan’s government condemned the verdicts, saying that pursuing democracy and human rights is not a crime. Its China-policy-making Mainland Affairs Council said in a statement that authorities have “fabricated charges and conducted political trials in the name of national security to shield an authoritarian regime”.