Hong Kong court jails three activists behind Tiananmen vigil

By Victoria Bisset

On March 11, 2023

A court in Hong Kong jailed three activists from a now-disbanded group best known for organizing annual candlelight vigils to commemorate the Tiananmen Square massacreof 1989.

Chow Hang Tung, Tang Ngok Kwan and Tsui Hon Kwong, who were members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, were sentenced to four-and-a-half months after failing to hand over information under a controversial national security law.

Chow said that the case against them was political and that national security was being used to crack down on civil society.

For more than three decades, the group organized annual candlelit vigils in the city’s Victoria Park to remember the brutal crackdown on pro-democracy activists in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

But in 2021 — a year after Beijing first banned the gathering, citing the pandemic, and following China’s introduction of a national security law to outlaw dissent in the semiautonomous city — the group voted to disband.

The case began before the group’s closure, as police sought details about its work and finances under the new law. However, the group refused, saying that it was not a foreign agent and was therefore not required to hand over the information, according to the Associated Press.

Some key details of the case against them, such as the overseas organizations and individuals that the group were accused of having links with, were redacted, and the three activists were found guilty last week.

Magistrate Peter Law said the case was the first of its kind under the new law and that the sentence needed to show that no violations would be permitted, according to the AP. However, the sentence was less than the maximum six months jail term, Reuters reports.

“We will continue doing what we have always done, that is to fight falsehood with truth, indignity with dignity, secrecy with openness, madness with reason, division with solidarity,” Chow said in the courtroom, while facing interruptions from the magistrate, according to Reuters. “We will fight these injustices wherever we must, be it on the streets, in the courtroom, or from a prison cell.”

Other leading activists, including Lee Cheuk Yan, were jailed over the mass protests against the national security law. Lee also faced charges related to the annual vigil.

“Defending the memory of Tiananmen is the first line of defense,” Chow said in 2021. “We have to use this moment to say Hong Kong people will not submit to your rewriting of history.”

This piece was republished from The Washington Post.