Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil activists jailed for up to 7 years, 3 months for inciting subversion, group fined HK$1.5 million

Three activists who once organised annual vigils to mark the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown crackdown have been sentenced to up to seven years and three months in prison.

Appearing before a panel of designated judges at the West Kowloon Law Courts Building on Friday, Chow Hang-tung, Lee Cheuk-yan, and Albert Ho were handed the jail terms for inciting subversion under a Beijing-imposed national security law.

Lee received a jail sentence of seven years, Chow was jailed for seven years and three months and Ho – who pleaded guilty – received a sentence of five years and two months imprisonment.

The trio formerly led the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, a now-defunct activist group that held annual vigils to remember the Tiananmen dead. The Alliance itself was handed a fine of HK$1.5 million on Friday, to be paid within three months.

The Tiananmen crackdown occurred on June 4, 1989, ending months of student-led demonstrations in China. It is estimated that hundreds, perhaps thousands, died when the People’s Liberation Army cracked down on protesters in Beijing.

The group held the mass candlelit vigils until the event was banned in 2020, with the government citing pandemic curbs, and again the following year. They voted to disband in September 2021.

Friday’s judgement said that, despite the present case not involving violence or the threat of violence, “nor had the defendant put forward any specific means of implementation or timetable” to end one-party rule in mainland China – one of the Alliance’s central tenets, the court still found that the offense was “of a serious nature.”

That placed the defendants within the higher of the two sentencing bands under the Beijing-imposed national security law, it added.

The ruling against the activists was condemned by rights groups and the United Nations, but lauded by the local government. The incitement of subversion offence carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Chow and Lee have been already held in detention for almost four years. They were found guilty last month, alongside the Alliance itself, with the judges saying they had “all along been hostile towards the [Chinese Communist Party] and the Central Government under its leadership.”

Ho – the only one of the trio to plead guilty – had been remanded for three years and six months.

See also: Tiananmen vigil activist Chow Hang-tung’s mitigation after guilty verdict in national security trial

In a mitigation hearing last month, barrister Erik Shum, representing Lee and Ho, asked the court to place the two activists in the lower of the two sentencing bands for the offence, saying they had been convicted of an inchoate offence with no premeditation, roadmap, or timeline.

“Whether the incitement led to substantial destruction is a very important sentencing factor,” Shum said.

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James Lee is a reporter at Hong Kong Free Press with an interest in culture and social issues. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in English and a minor in Journalism from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he witnessed the institution’s transformation over the course of the 2019 extradition bill protests and after the passing of the Beijing-imposed security law.

Since joining HKFP in 2023, he has covered local politics, the city’s housing crisis, as well as landmark court cases including the 47 democrats national security trial. He was previously a reporter at The Standard where he interviewed pro-establishment heavyweights and extensively covered the Covid-19 pandemic and Hong Kong’s political overhauls under the national security law.