HONG KONG — Three former organizers of Hong Kong’s annual candlelight vigils for the victims of China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown were sentenced Friday, Sept. 11, 2026, under Beijing’s national security law, Hong Kong Free Press and NBC News reported.

At the West Kowloon Law Courts Building, designated national-security judges sentenced barrister Chow Hang-tung to seven years and three months, former lawmaker Lee Cheuk-yan to seven years, and former lawmaker Albert Ho — the only defendant who pleaded guilty — to five years and two months for inciting subversion, per HKFP and NBC. The now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China was separately fined HK$1.5 million, payable within three months, HKFP reported.

The alliance ran the Victoria Park vigils for three decades — long the only large-scale public Tiananmen remembrance on Chinese soil — until authorities banned the gathering in 2020 and 2021. The group voted to disband in September 2021. Chow and Lee have been held continuously since they were charged in 2021; Ho had been remanded for about three and a half years, according to HKFP.

Speech treated as “serious” subversion

Judges last month convicted Chow, Lee, and the alliance after concluding that the group’s call to “end one-party dictatorship” amounted to incitement to overthrow the Chinese Communist Party. Friday’s written judgment still labeled the offense “of a serious nature” — the higher of two national-security sentencing bands — even while acknowledging the case involved no violence, no threat of violence, and no concrete timetable or means to end one-party rule, HKFP reported.

In mitigation after the August verdict, Chow, who represented herself, said the ruling “boils down to saying that pursuing democracy is a crime,” NBC reported. “Believing that dictatorship is wrong and democracy is right — if that isn’t a belief, then what is?” she added, saying she “would rather be a criminal than a person who betrays their conscience.”

Lee told the court during trial that the alliance sought free elections for mainland Chinese, not the elimination of the Communist Party as such, NBC reported. Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee previously praised the conviction, saying the alliance had been “planting seeds of hatred” and “inciting people to subvert state power,” per NBC.

The United States, other Western governments, and the United Nations condemned the August verdict as another blow to expression in Hong Kong. Assistant Secretary of State Riley Barnes said the vigils “sought only to remember the past and honor the lives lost,” NBC reported. Local authorities argue the 2020 national security law restored order after 2019 unrest and that speech cannot be a “pretext” for unlawful activity.

Handpicked judges, years of pretrial custody, and a statute that criminalizes peaceful political advocacy are what “rule of law” looks like when the state writes the script. Remembering the dead was enough.

Sources