HONG KONG (AP) — A Hong Kong court on Monday rejected an earlier ruling Tiananmen vigil organizer’s attempt to overturn her charges and move forward with a landmark case widely seen as part of a yearslong crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement.
Chow Hang-tung, a former leader of the group who organized a decades-old vigil commemorating China’s 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, was charged with in 2021 incitement to subversion, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. She was charged along with two other former leaders of the group, Albert Ho and Lee Cheuk-yan.
Their case fell under a national security law imposed by Beijing in 2020 to suppress massive anti-government protests in 2019. The trio was accused of inciting others to unlawfully challenge the leadership of the Communist Party.
Chow, who is a lawyer and is defending himself, said the indictment was unacceptably vague because authorities had not specified an unlawful means. She said it could amount to a “sweeping indictment.”
Prosecutor Ned Lai argued that unlawful means means means that violate China’s constitution, which stipulates that the party’s leadership is the defining characteristic of socialism with Chinese characteristics and that damaging the socialist system is prohibited.
The three-judge panel approved by the government to oversee the case ruled against Chow. Judge Alex Lee said the panel would issue an opinion in January.
Chow appeared calm when she heard of the decision and smiled into the public gallery before leaving the courtroom.
The Tiananmen Vigil, organized by the Hong Kong Alliance in support of China’s patriotic democratic movements, was the only large-scale public commemoration decades from China’s 1989 crackdown until authorities banned it in 2020, citing anti-pandemic measures.
The group came under increasing pressure as a police force opened an investigationaccusing him of being a foreign agent. The group rejected the allegations and refused to cooperate. Chow, Ho and Lee were later charged with violations of the national security law.
In 2021 the members of the alliance voted to dissolve.
Chow and two other core members of the group were sentenced in 2023 for failure to provide and receive information to the authorities a prison sentence of 4 1/2 months each. But in March the trio arrived have their convictions overturned at the city’s highest court, marking a rare victory for the city’s pro-democracy activists.
A trial in the national security trial is scheduled for January 22.
Since pandemic-era restrictions on gatherings were lifted, the park where the vigil was previously held now remains on the occasion of the Tiananmen anniversary occupied by a carnival presentation of Chinese food and products.
Fernando Cheung, spokesman for Amnesty International Hong Kong Overseas, said the court’s ruling on Monday showed authorities were “weaponizing the overly broad concept of ‘national security’ to suppress freedom of expression with impunity.”
“The commemoration of the Tiananmen Square crackdown should never have been prosecuted,” he said, calling for the release of those jailed for what he called peacefully exercising their right to freedom of expression.
Hong Kong’s government insists the city’s security law has restored the city’s stability after the 2019 protests.
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