Nine Hong Kong democratic activists were sentenced to six to ten months in prison for joining a police-banned Tiananmen vigil last year. Three others were sentenced on parole on the same charges of participating in an illegal assembly or inciting others to attend. Overall, the 2020 vigil involved a total of 26 activists.
The convictions came a week after leaders of the group organizing the annual vigil were separately charged with inciting subversion following a police raid on a city museum dedicated to Beijing’s 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square. The Hong Kong Alliance had organized three decades of vigils to commemorate the victims of the operation. Once one of the most visible symbols of Hong Kong’s political freedoms, the June 4 event has been banned by authorities for the past two years, justifying it with health security concerns.
But China is also in the process of reshaping the financial hub into its authoritarian image after the huge and often violent protests for democracy that rocked Hong Kong in 2019. Prominent figures of democracy have been arrested and anyone deemed “unpatriotic” Was purged. Albert Ho, former vice president of the Hong Kong Alliance, was sentenced to 10 months for incitement and six months for attending the vigil. Sentence that will be served in conjunction with the 18 months he is already serving for other sentences.
Two, Nathan Law and Sunny Cheung, had left the city for exile before the group was first summoned to court in September last year. Joshua Wong, Lester Shum, Tiffany Yuen and Janelle Leung were sentenced earlier this year for attending the vigil. The last eight defendants, who pleaded not guilty, will be tried in November. Tens of thousands of people defied the police ban on the 2020 vigil and massed peacefully in the city’s Victoria Park. In recent years, the crowds at the annual event had swelled as anger intensified over how Beijing was handling Hong Kong. Tolerance for this political challenge is over.
Just a few weeks after last year’s demonstration, Beijing imposed a vast national security law that transformed the political landscape of a once-off Hong Kong. Over 100 prominent pro-democracy figures have been arrested under this law, mostly for expressing political views. Most of them have been denied bail and, if convicted, face life imprisonment. The Hong Kong Alliance, officially named Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, is the latest target of the security law. Last week, the organization and its three leaders were accused of “inciting subversion” after police raided the “memory of the victims” museum in Tiananmen Square, taking away documents and artifacts from the museum on June 4. , now closed, of the group.