By Ingrid "Shortwave" Frost
For three decades, they lit candles in Victoria Park to remember the dead of June 4, 1989. This week, a Hong Kong court called that remembrance a crime.
Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, and Chow Hang-tung, 41, leaders of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance, were found guilty of "incitement to subversion" under the 2020 national security law Beijing imposed on the city, the Guardian reports. A press summary handed to reporters said the pair had incited others "to organise, plan, commit or participate in acts by unlawful means with a view to subverting the state power."
The Alliance had organized the annual vigil marking China's deadly crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square. The BBC reports three activists in total were accused of inciting others under the law. An allied activist group called the verdict the product of a "twisted" judicial system that had decided the pair's guilt long before the trial began, according to Al Jazeera.
The case lands squarely in a pattern watched closely by human rights groups: Hong Kong's national security law, sold by Beijing as a tool against terrorism and foreign interference, increasingly used against acts of public memory and dissent. Critics call the conviction a marker of how far the city's promised freedoms — guaranteed for fifty years after the 1997 handover — have eroded in just six.
Sentencing details were not available in the source reporting.
FILED FROM SOMEWHERE WITH BAD COFFEE -
— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian, BBC World, and Al Jazeera.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."