Three former members of a Hong Kong group that organised annual vigils to mark China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown have been found guilty of not complying with a national security police request for information.
Key points:
- The now-disbanded Alliance was the main organiser of Hong Kong’s June 4 candlelight vigil for victims of China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown
- Since Hong Kong’s massive pro-democracy protests in 2019, authorities have not allowed the vigil to take place on COVID-related grounds
- China has released from prison a Hong Kong-based publisher who was arrested while preparing to release an unauthorised biography of Chinese leader Xi Jinping
Prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and barrister Chow Hang-tung, 38, was among those convicted by the magistrate court.
Chow is a former vice-chairperson of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China.
Two other former standing committee members of the Alliance, Tang Ngok Kwan and Tsui Hon Kwong, were also found guilty.
The now-disbanded Alliance was the main organiser of Hong Kong’s June 4 candlelight vigil for victims of China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Every year it drew tens of thousands of people in the largest public commemoration of its kind on Chinese soil.
Since Hong Kong’s massive pro-democracy protests in 2019, authorities have not allowed the vigil to take place on COVID-related grounds.
The Alliance disbanded in September 2021 after authorities arrested several senior members of the group, including Chow.
During the trial that only kicked off late last year, more than a year after the defendants were arrested, the Alliance was accused by government prosecutor Ivan Cheung of being a “foreign agent” for an unnamed group, after allegedly receiving $HK20,000 ($2,547) from it.
Chow, however, denied this in court, saying the Alliance was an independent civil society group run by Hongkongers, and that the case against her and the others amounted to “political persecution”.
“The existence of an independent organisation like us that can check power, is essential to the security of a nation, not a threat,” she told the court.
Magistrate Peter Law, who was hand-picked to hear national security cases by Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed leader, said in a written judgement that it was necessary for the police to “ascertain the background” of the group given its political activities and “nexus of interactions with local and non-local organisations and people”.
Sentencing is expected on March 11 with a maximum jail term of six months for this particular offence.
Chow is already serving two other prison terms for unlawful assembly linked to her involvement in organising Tiananmen commemoration events, and faces a separate, graver charge of subverting state power through the Alliance.
Some key details of the case, including the overseas organisations and individuals alleged to have ties to the Alliance, were kept confidential after the prosecutor applied for “Public Interest Immunity” (PII), arguing these disclosures would harm the public interest.
The national security law, which punishes acts including subversion and collusion with foreign forces, has been criticised by some Western governments as a tool to crush dissent.
Chinese and Hong Kong officials say the law is necessary to restore stability to the city after the city’s protracted anti-China protests in 2019.
Publisher behind Xi biography released from Chinese prison
A Hong Kong-based publisher who was arrested while preparing to release an unauthorised biography of Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been freed after serving a 10-year sentence in a south China prison.
The respected San Francisco-based rights monitoring group Dui Hua reported on Thursday that Yao Wentian, 83, was released on February 26 and returned to his family in Hong Kong the next day.
Mr Yao was arrested in October 2013 and served his entire sentence apart from an eight-month term reduction in Dongguan prison near the border with the semi-autonomous Chinese city.
He had repeatedly been denied appeals for medical release filed by Dui Hua, but had been moved to the prison’s medical facility and was allowed monthly visits from his wife, the group said in a news release.
Mr Yao had been sentenced to 10 years and fined for “smuggling common goods” after he brought construction materials into China to help a friend who was refurbishing his apartment, Dui Hua said.
He was accused of failing to declare the value of the goods at customs, not normally a crime punished with such a harsh sentence.
Mr Yao’s publishing of sensitive books was “almost certainly the reason for his imprisonment,” Dui Hua said.
Reports at the time said police and customs agents appeared to have been laying in wait for Mr Yao as he crossed the border into China with several cans of paint for a longtime friend.
Mr Yao could not immediately be reached for contact, and his former lawyer, Mo Shaoping, said he had had no contact with Yao and his family since his trial.
Mr Yao’s arrest was followed by the rounding up of several other independent Hong Kong publishers, raising deep fears over China’s trampling of the city’s civil liberties that exploded into months of anti-government demonstrations in 2019.
Reuters/AP