Hong Kong convicts Tiananmen vigil group and two leaders of inciting subversion

Two former leaders of the group that ran Hong Kong's annual Tiananmen Square vigil were convicted on Aug. 21 of inciting subversion under a Beijing-imposed national security law, and each now faces up to 10 years in prison. The group itself was convicted alongside them.

Chow Hang-tung, 41, a human rights barrister who represented herself, and Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, a former opposition lawmaker, were found guilty at the West Kowloon Law Courts Building by three national security judges appointed by the government: Alex Lee Wan-tang, Johnny Chan Jong-herng and Anna Lai Yuen-kee, sitting as the Court of First Instance. Both had pleaded not guilty. They were charged in September 2021, but both were already behind bars by then, Lee since April 2021 while serving 14 months for organising unauthorised assemblies in 2019, and Chow since her bail was revoked that June.

The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which Lee once chaired and Chow served as vice-chairwoman, organized candlelight vigils in Causeway Bay's Victoria Park for three decades to mark the 1989 crackdown in Beijing. Members voted to dissolve the group in September 2021, weeks after its leaders were charged, but it remained a defendant in the case and was convicted with them.

What the charge covers

Prosecutors said the alliance incited others to overthrow China's ruling Communist Party through unlawful means, pointing to its call to end 'one-party dictatorship,' one of the group's core demands. They said the group fostered public hatred toward Beijing through what they called 'objectively negative' portrayals, and argued that the case was not political.

The defense denied any intent to topple the party. Lee told the court the campaign was not about ending the party's leadership but about moving toward democracy and letting the people decide who leads them, and that the Communist Party should not enforce dictatorship.

The charge, inciting subversion of state power, targets those who incite others to commit subversion rather than those who carry it out. It carries a maximum of 10 years, rather than the life term available for the primary subversion offense.

The ruling turns on a stated organizational objective. The court found that the alliance's goal of ending one-party rule could itself amount to criminal incitement to subversion. The group had said the objective was meant to promote democracy and human rights. Judge Alex Lee cited Article 23 of the 2020 national security law, the provision that creates the offence of inciting subversion and sets its penalties at five to 10 years where the offence is of a serious nature and up to five years where it is minor. It is a different provision from Article 23 of the Basic Law, under which Hong Kong passed its own security ordinance in 2024.

The court's reasoning

In a summary of their reasoning, the judges said the two defendants and Albert Ho, a former lawmaker who pleaded guilty in January, had refused to pull back after the security law was imposed and pressed on with the alliance's course.

They ruled that Lee and Chow intentionally encouraged the group's supporters to wait for the right moment to pursue the goal of ending one-party dictatorship through unlawful means. The judges found the call was aimed not at restoring multiparty cooperation under China's constitution but at ending the party's constitutional leadership status entirely.

They had all along been hostile towards the CCP and the central government under its leadership.

The trial opened on January 22. The Associated Press reported that it had been scheduled to run for 75 days but moved faster than expected, finishing its closing statements on the 24th day. Ho, who has been detained for more than four years in total, is awaiting sentencing after his guilty plea, a move that typically brings a reduced sentence.

Three decades of vigils

For 30 years, the candlelight vigil the alliance held each June 4 in Victoria Park was the only large-scale public commemoration of the Tiananmen crackdown on Chinese soil, drawing tens of thousands of people who filled the park with candles to mourn the victims. It was long seen as a marker of the freedoms that set Hong Kong apart from the mainland.

Hundreds of people, and possibly thousands, were killed in 1989 when troops and tanks moved against pro-democracy demonstrators around Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The crackdown was a turning point in China's modern history, ensuring that the market reforms that made it the world's second-largest economy were not paired with political change. It remains a taboo on the mainland, where authorities censor discussion and bar public commemorations.

The vigil was banned in 2020, during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic and only weeks before Beijing imposed the national security law to quell the anti-government protests that had convulsed the city through 2019.

The alliance was one of dozens of civil society groups that dissolved after the law took effect.

Sentencing still to come

Sentencing is expected at a later date, and one of the judges said Lee and Chow would make pleas for lighter sentences next week. Both defendants smiled and waved to the public gallery before they were led out of the courtroom.

Chow and Lee have now spent nearly five years in custody since their September 2021 arrest, most of it awaiting a verdict in a case that dates to the charging of the alliance's leaders that autumn.

Dozens of people lined up outside the West Kowloon Law Courts Building under drizzling rain on the morning of the verdict, and police checked identity documents and searched bags. Tang Ngok-kwan, a former alliance member, said police would not let him into the building unless he gave up what he was carrying: copies of past news reports about the crackdown, and bookmarks printed with 'vindicate June 4.' He decided not to go in.

Reaction to the verdict

Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, called the verdict no surprise and said Hong Kong's 'twisted' judicial system had already decided the pair were guilty in 2021. He described Lee and Chow as 'true Chinese patriots' who were silenced because they 'spoke truth to power' and 'held up a mirror to the Chinese Communist Party.'

Asked about the case before the verdict, a Hong Kong government spokesperson said the administration 'strongly condemns any biased remarks and smears' against its effort to safeguard national security, and said the rights and freedoms of residents remain protected under the law.

The verdict came days after China's leader, Xi Jinping, made a rare public reference to 1989. Speaking on Aug. 17 at a centenary event for his predecessor Jiang Zemin, Xi said that during what he called a serious political upheaval in the spring and summer of that year, Jiang had 'resolutely supported and implemented the Central Committee's correct decisions.' CNN reported the remarks as an endorsement of the party's decision to clear the square.

The case is among the latest against Hong Kong's once-vibrant pro-democracy movement, largely dismantled by authorities in the city and Beijing since 2020. Many of its leading figures have been jailed, among them the former media owner Jimmy Lai, sentenced in February to 20 years for foreign collusion under the security law and for seditious publication. Margaret Chan, a former vigil-goer who joined the line at 6 a.m., questioned how the group could have incited anyone, noting that its name carried the word 'patriotic.'

We can see to what extent the court in Hong Kong falls into the level of the party-led judiciary in the mainland through the criminal verdict.

Lai, a senior fellow at the center, said the incitement-to-subversion charge has commonly been used in mainland China to criminalize the work of human rights lawyers, activists and intellectuals, among them the late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo.

What comes next

The two convicted leaders, the alliance and Albert Ho now await sentencing, with pleas in mitigation expected next week. A date for the sentences has not been set.

Each of the convicted leaders faces up to 10 years in prison, the maximum for the offense.

The commemoration that once filled Victoria Park with candles has not been held there since pandemic restrictions were lifted.