On Mar. 6, Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal lifted convictions placed on human rights lawyer Chow Hang-tung, along with two organizers of a candlelight vigil honoring the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. However, all three had already completed their services.
In a rare victory for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement, Chow, Tang Ngok-kwan and Tsui Hon-kwong were declared to not have been given a fair trial.
The three defendants were all members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, which was disbanded in 2021 following the communist-ruled government’s crackdown on dissent.
Chow, Tang and Tsui were charged after refusing to submit documents to national security; a requirement that applies only to “foreign agents.” They were later jailed in 2023 for this supposed crime.
The documents were later used by the prosecution to persecute the three former alliance members. However, the Court of Final Appeal called this usage of the documents “heavily redacted,” as it undermined the case by removing key evidence needed to prove the defendants were foreign agents. This also denied the defendants a fair trial, as they had no access to crucial details of the prosecution’s argument.
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“Accordingly, the Court unanimously allowed the appeals, and quashed the convictions and sentences,” the court ruled.
As the defendants exited the courtroom on Mar. 6, Tang spoke to reporters that this case proved that the Alliance was never a “foreign agent.”
“Chow Hang-tung… played a leading role in the process and put forward very convincing reasons to explain why the police’s request was an abuse of power, which made us more confident,” Tang said.
Overseas lawyer Kevin Yam condemned the police’s demand for the Alliance’s documents as “outrageous,” stating that their actions did not even meet the standards of mainland Chinese courts, which operate under the control of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“They were deliberately testing how far the National Security Law would allow them to go,” he said.
Tried for honoring victims
Since 2021, Chow is still awaiting trial for the “incitement to subversion” charges under the 2020 National Security Law. Two other former Alliance leaders, Albert Ho and Lee Cheuk-yan, also remain in custody.
They were charged for organizing the annual vigil commemorating the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, former Hong Kong Bar Association Chairman Paul Harris wrote in a March 6 op-ed for The Counsel.
“Like her co-defendants, she is detained simply for exercising the rights of free speech and freedom of assembly which were guaranteed to them by Britain and China in 1984, and which are exercised by everyone in the UK all the time,” Harris said.
Held every June 4 from 1990 to 2020, the vigil would be held at the city’s Victoria Park, being the only major ceremony for the fallen. However, in 2020, authorities banned it as COVID-19 lockdown measures were implemented.
Once the measures were lifted, the park would be host to a pro-Beijing carnival. Anyone caught commemorating the event would be arrested.
Free speech threatened
Talk-show host Tam Tak-chi — also known as Fast Beat — was charged with sedition, becoming the first person to be charged since China’s takeover of the city in 1997.
On the same day as Chow’s case, his appeals under the purpose of free speech and proof of his supposed incitement to violence were rejected by the Court of Final Appeal.
An activist for People Power, Tam was found guilty on eight counts of sedition, connected to slogans he expressed between January and July 2020. One such slogan was the one used for the 2019 protest movement, which read, “Free Hong Kong, revolution now!” He also allegedly urged authorities to “delay no more” in disbanding the police, using a homonym for a Cantonese insult referencing the target’s mother.
The Hong Kong Democracy Council said the rejection of Tam’s appeals would bring “wide-ranging implications” as the CCP would charge more people with sedition.
Sedition had been used to describe “hatred, contempt or dissatisfaction” with the government, or “encourage disaffection,” Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported. The “anti-free” sedition law — formerly a British law in 1938 — had been revived in 2019 following the protest movement.
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