Responding to the sentencing of activists who organized Tiananmen vigils in Hong Kong, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director Sarah Brooks said:
“During most of the 30 years that Hongkongers commemorated the Tiananmen crackdown with an annual candlelight vigil, it would have been unthinkable that the organizers of the event could be jailed for their peaceful activism. But today’s sentencing illustrates just how much Hong Kong has been transformed in the name of ‘national security’.
“This sentencing is a triple tragedy: for the activists being unjustly punished; the survivors and victims of the Tiananmen crackdown itself; and the generations of Hongkongers denied the space to discuss one of the most consequential events in modern Chinese history.
“The persecution of the Tiananmen activists exposes the profound fear of dissenting voices that defines Hong Kong’s ‘national security’ regime. But you do not strengthen national security by imprisoning people for peacefully remembering the dead.
“The authorities may believe that punishing prominent figures will deter others, but history shows that demands for truth and accountability do not disappear simply because they are criminalized.
“Today’s sentence is an insult to the victims’ memory and an affront to history. The Hong Kong Alliance activists have committed no internationally recognized crime and should be immediately and unconditionally released. Their right to appeal against these unjust jail sentences must be protected.”
Background
Hong Kong’s High Court today sentenced lawyer Chow Hang-tung to seven years and three months in prison and her fellow Tiananmen activist Lee Cheuk-yan to seven years in prison for “inciting subversion of state power” under the city’s National Security Law. Albert Ho Chun-yan, who previously pleaded guilty to the same charge, was sentenced to five years and two months.
Chow and Lee were among seven members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (Hong Kong Alliance) charged with different offences under the Beijing-imposed law in September 2021. Both have been held in pre-trial detention throughout the years since, having been repeatedly denied bail. They have been designated prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International.
Amnesty International has repeatedly raised concerns that the National Security Law, enacted in June 2020, is being used to target civil society groups, journalists, political activists, academics and others for actions that are fully protected under international human rights law.
The Tiananmen vigils commemorated the events of 4 June 1989, when Chinese troops opened fire on students and workers who had been peacefully protesting for political reforms in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Hundreds – possibly thousands – of people were killed. Tens of thousands more were arrested across China in the suppression that followed.
In the 37 years since the crackdown, all discussion of the incident has been heavily censored in China, and authorities have effectively erased it from their version of history.
From the beginning, commemorating the Tiananmen crackdown was forbidden in mainland China. But in Hong Kong, crowds reaching hundreds of thousands of people would gather annually in centrally located Victoria Park to peacefully remember those killed. The vigil participants regularly called on the Chinese authorities to reveal the truth about what happened and accept accountability for the atrocity; for thirty years, local government did not, in practice, interfere or object.
The last major vigil organized by the Hong Kong Alliance was held in 2019. The Hong Kong vigil was banned in 2020 and 2021, ostensibly on Covid-19 grounds. Since then, the National Security Law has effectively criminalized peaceful protest in the city – including Tiananmen commemorations.