Hong Kong Court Convicts 2 Tiananmen Square Vigil Organizers

Lee Cheuk-yan, then-chairman of Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, holds a press conference in Hong Kong on June 1, 2020. Sung Pi-lung/The Epoch TimesTwo Hong Kong activists who once led thousands to annual June 4 candlelight vigils to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing were convicted on Aug. 21 in a trial that critics have condemned as unjust.Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung, former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, were convicted of inciting subversion under the Beijing-imposed national security law. The alliance was also found guilty.The two “incited other persons to organize, plan, commit or participate in acts by unlawful means with a view to subverting the state power,” a press summary of the court decision reads.Lee, 69, and Chow, 41, who were charged in September 2021, pleaded not guilty to the subversion charge in January. That same month, the alliance voted to disband amid mounting pressure from Hong Kong authorities.The pair face up to 10 years in prison and are expected to be sentenced at a later date.Another former alliance leader, Albert Ho, 74, pleaded guilty in January.In 1989, a student-led pro-democracy movement swept across China, ending when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) deployed troops and tanks to crush the protests around Tiananmen Square, leaving an estimated thousands dead and injured.The event became a taboo subject in China, but the alliance kept its memory alive by holding annual candlelight vigils in Hong Kong beginning in 1990.In 2019, the last year the alliance held the vigil, an estimated 180,000 Hongkongers gathered at Victoria Park to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the massacre.Hong Kong authorities banned the 2020 vigil citing COVID-19, but the introduction of the national security law that year effectively brought the decades-long tradition of public commemoration at Victoria Park to an end.One of the alliance’s key demands was to “end one-party dictatorship” in China.According to the press summary, the court said Lee and Chow “intended to cause others to lose confidence in the CCP by stirring up hostility and causing division.” It also said the defendants were “encouraging other people” to “end the leadership by the CCP.”International CriticismThe verdicts against Lee and Chow immediately drew international criticism.The Congressional-Executive Commission on China, an independent U.S. government agency, said in a statement that the verdicts “should be condemned around the world as the latest in a long line of political prosecutions used to silence dissent and dismantle Hong Kong’s fundamental freedoms.”“Their peaceful advocacy for democratic reforms—and their efforts to preserve the memory of the Tiananmen Massacre—are not threats to state power; they are the exercise of rights that Hong Kong and Beijing authorities promised to protect, not punish,” the commission stated. “They should be released unconditionally and lauded globally as champions of freedom.”Mark L. Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, issued a statement calling Lee and Chow “true Chinese patriots” who “gave voice to the victims of the Tiananmen Square massacre and their families.”“They’ve been silenced because they spoke truth to power and held a mirror up to the Chinese Communist Party, forcing its leaders to face their historic crimes,” Clifford said.Megan Khoo, policy director of London-based Hong Kong Watch, said in a statement that the only “crimes” committed by Lee and Chow were for “daring to seek the truth, pursue justice and democracy, and commemorate the sacrifice of those who lost their lives in its pursuit.”“Today’s verdict was a foregone conclusion from the start and has no bearing on the criminality of the defendants, but has revealed a fragile police state which fears the power of truth and the courage of those who choose to remember it,” Khoo said.