Chow Hang-tung was a brilliant university student who grew into a young human rights lawyer with a promising career ahead of her and a guaranteed position in any law firm. But now she has been condemned in her city of Hong Kong for holding vigils to commemorate the victims of the Tiananmen Square repression in Beijing in 1989.
The Hong Kong High Court has agreed to reinstate the sentence against this activist, according to associations fighting for human rights in China latest setback for democracy advocates in the city.
Chow Hang-tung, former leader of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of China’s Patriotic Democratic Movements, was sentenced to 15 months in prison in January 2022 for inciting others to attend the vigil banned by police to protest against to protest the execution of the sentence by the authorities. For decades, the annual vigil organized by the alliance was the only large-scale public commemoration of the 1989 crackdown on Beijing’s most famous square after a citizen protest was crushed by the regime.
In December 2022, Chow won his appeal against his conviction, a rare victory for the city’s activists amid Beijing’s crackdown on dissidents. At the time, a Supreme Court judge ruled that while Chow had encouraged others to gather in the park, It was not a criminal offense because the legality of the ban had not been proven. When the judge overturned his original conviction, he ruled that the police had failed in their duty to take the initiative and consider feasible measures as conditions for holding the annual vigil.
But the government appealed the judge’s decision and on Thursday the appeals court reinstated Chow’s conviction.
The alliance gained international prominence by organizing candlelight vigils in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park to mark the anniversary of the Chinese military’s crackdown on pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. However, in 2021, it voted under the shadow of a national security law imposed for the dissolution of Beijing.
Supporters say the closure shows that the freedoms and autonomy promised when the former British colony was returned to China in 1997 are fading.
Last year, a carnival organized by pro-Beijing groups to celebrate the 1997 handover of power was held in Victoria Park, even after COVID-19 restrictions were lifted. As authorities erased memories of the massacre, some Hong Kong residents fought to keep memories alive by distributing LED candles, writing about the crackdown or buying books about it.
