Two Hong Kong activists who organised annual vigils to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown have been found guilty of inciting others to subvert state power under the city’s controversial national security law.
Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, and Chow Hang-tung, 41, face a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail after being convicted under the China-introduced law. Sentencing is expected at a later date.
A third defendant, 74-year-old former lawmaker Albert Ho, pleaded guilty in January.
Prosecutors argued the defendants “endanger(ed) national security in the name of human rights”. Chow, who represented herself, told the court in May that the law itself was on trial.
Hong Kong used to be one of the only places in Chinese territory where people could gather to mark the deadly 1989 crackdown against pro-democracy protesters.
Authorities banned these gatherings in 2020, citing Covid-19 policies, but they have never resumed. This was also the year the national security law, which makes illegal a wider range of dissenting acts, officially came into force.
Lee and Chow were leaders of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance (HKS), which was founded in May 1989 to support students holding pro-democracy rallies.
Weeks later, the Communist Party crushed pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square with troops and tanks. Estimates of the death toll range from a few hundred to many thousands.
Over the next three decades, HKA called on authorities to accept responsibility for the crackdown, free dissidents and introduce democratic reform.
The Alliance’s leaders were charged in 2021 and have been behind bars since.
Rights group Amnesty International has said the case “relies on vague, overly broad and arbitrary definitions of ‘subversion'”.
