HONG KONG (AP) — A Hong Kong court was hearing the final arguments Monday in the national security trial for two organizers of the large vigils remembering the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.Hong Kong for decades was the only place in China where a large-scale public commemoration of the crackdown was held. The vigils were banned in 2020, and the two former organizers were charged in 2021 with inciting subversion under a Beijing-imposed national security law that has virtually stifled the city’s pro-democracy movement. Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan, two former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, have pleaded not guilty. If convicted, they could face up to 10 years in prison.Observers say their prosecution reflected the city’s decline in Western-style civil liberties, which Beijing promised to maintain for 50 years when the former British colony returned to its rule in 1997. The governments of Beijing and Hong Kong insist that the security law is necessary for the city’s stability.
During the trial, the prosecution focused on “ending one-party rule,” one of the alliance’s core demands, arguing that their advocacy was about inciting others to use unlawful means to overthrow the leadership of China’s ruling Communist Party. It alleged the defendants were not advocating for amending the constitution.
