Tiananmen vigil organiser Chow Hang-tung files appeal against subversion sentence

Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil organiser Chow Hang-tung has filed an appeal against her conviction and sentence under the Beijing-imposed national security law.

The 41-year-old activist was sentenced to seven years and three months behind bars last month after being convicted of inciting subversion, a charge to which she had pleaded not guilty.

Chow filed the appeal on Monday, according to local media. A hearing has yet to be scheduled.

Former lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, was also found guilty alongside Chow and sentenced to seven years in prison. Another former lawmaker, 74-year-old Albert Ho, pleaded guilty when the trial opened in January and was jailed for five years and two months.

The trio were former leaders of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which for decades held annual vigils to commemorate China’s 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. The Alliance, which was also convicted and fined HK$1.5 million, voted to disband in September 2021 following the arrests of its leadership.

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.

Authorities accused the Alliance of inciting subversion under the national security law through its calls to “end one-party rule” in China, a key tenet of the group since it was founded in 1989.

A court in August found the trio guilty of the offence, with three designated national security judges saying that the defendants “had all along been hostile towards the [Chinese Communist Party] and the Central Government under its leadership.”

Their conviction has been condemned by Western governments, rights groups, and the United Nations. Meanwhile, the ruling was lauded by local authorities.

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Hans Tse is a reporter at Hong Kong Free Press with an interest in local politics, academia, and media transformation. He was previously a social science researcher, with writing published in the Social Movement Studies and Social Transformation of Chinese Societies journals. He holds an M.Phil in communication from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Before joining HKFP, he also worked as a freelance reporter for Initium between 2019 and 2021, where he covered the height - and aftermath - of the 2019 protests, as well as the national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020.