HONG KONG (AP) — A Hong Kong court on Tuesday concluded final arguments in a national security trial for two former organizers of the city’s vigils remembering the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.Judge Alex Lee, one of the three government-vetted judges, said that they hoped to deliver a verdict in July for Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan, two former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. For decades, the now-defunct alliance organized the only large-scale public commemoration in China that attracted tens of thousands annually until the event was banned in 2020 during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. Chow and Lee were charged in 2021 with inciting subversion under a Beijing-imposed national security law, facing a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison if convicted. They pleaded not guilty in January.
Observers say their prosecution and the disappearance of the vigil symbolized the decline in freedoms that Beijing had promised when the former British colony returned to Chinese rule in 1997. The Hong Kong and Beijing governments said that the security law is crucial for the city’s stability.
3 MIN READ
2 MIN READ
6 MIN READ
