Hong Kong court convicts 2 organizers of Tiananmen vigils in national security case

Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung, whose commemorations of China’s 1989 crackdown drew tens of thousands of people each year, had pleaded not guilty to inciting subversion.

HONG KONG — Two former organizers of Hong Kong’s decades-old vigil in remembrance of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown were convicted Friday in a national security case brought under a China-imposed law that has effectively crushed the Chinese territory’s previously thriving pro-democracy movement.

Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung, former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, were charged in 2021 with inciting subversion under the national security law. They had both pleaded not guilty and face a maximum prison term of 10 years. The alliance was also found guilty.

The verdict is among the latest involving Hong Kong’s once-vibrant pro-democracy movement, which has largely been dismantled by Hong Kong and Chinese authorities.

Pro-democracy activist Lee Cheuk-yan speaking ahead of the annual candlelight vigil in Hong Kong on June 4, 2020.Anthony Kwan / Getty Images fileFor three decades, the candlelight vigil organized by the alliance was the only large-scale public commemoration of the Tiananmen Square crackdown on Chinese territory, drawing tens of thousands of people annually. The event was banned in 2020 during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, weeks before Beijing imposed the security law on Hong Kong to quell the 2019 massive anti-government protests.

Observers say their trial symbolizes the erosion of freedom of expression in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.