Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan, former organizers of annual candlelight vigils to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, have just been convicted of “inciting subversion.” They have not yet been sentenced but face up to ten years behind bars.
The charge had been brought against them in 2021 under the National Security Law that the one-party dictatorship of the People’s Republic of China imposed on Hong Kong in 2020. This law “has effectively crushed the city’s previously thriving pro-democracy movement” (Associated Press, August 21, 2026).
Candlelight vigils
For Chow, the new conviction comes in addition to two previous convictions for her involvement in candlelight vigils.
In December 2021, she was sentenced to 12 months in prison for a 2020 candlelight vigil. In January 2022, she was sentenced to about ten more months for a 2021 vigil. In December 2022, Hong Kong’s High Court quashed the conviction for the 2021 vigil, but in January 2024 the Court of Final Appeal reinstated the conviction.
The group that Lee and Chow (shown above) once led, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, was also found guilty in the present case.
The three judges ruled that the alliance’s call to “end one-party dictatorship” aimed to end the ruling Communist Party’s leadership status under the constitution, and that the “end” in the phrase carried the meaning of “overthrowing” and “undermining.”
In the verdict, they wrote that the defendants persisted in the call after the law’s introduction [in 2020], neglecting that it was in breach of the constitution, which states the party’s leadership is a defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics. That falls within “other unlawful means” under the security law, the judges said….
“They did not genuinely believe their words and deeds had not violated the national security law. They just refused to pull back from the brink,” wrote the judges, who insisted they weren’t tried because of political views…
Hong Kong leader John Lee said that the alliance has long deliberately planted seeds of hatred against the party and the central government in society, and their acts endangered national security….
Hundreds of people, possibly thousands, were killed in the 1989 crackdown as military tanks rolled into the center of Beijing. The Tiananmen Square crackdown was a pivotal moment in China’s modern history, showing that the market reform that transformed the country into the world’s second-largest economy wouldn’t be coupled with political liberalization.
The defendants refused to pull back from the brink of expressing their views, and the judges in the case refused to pull back from the brink of convicting persons innocent of any wrongdoing.
