HONG KONG (AP) — Two former organizers of Hong Kong’s decades-old vigil in remembrance of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown were convicted Friday in a national security case brought under a China-imposed law that has effectively crushed the city’s previously thriving pro-democracy movement.Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung, former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, were charged in 2021 with inciting subversion under the national security law. They both had pleaded not guilty and face a maximum prison term of 10 years. The alliance was also found guilty.The verdict is among the latest involving Hong Kong’s once-vibrant pro-democracy movement, which has largely been dismantled by Hong Kong and Chinese authorities.For three decades, the candlelight vigil organized by the alliance was the only large-scale public commemoration that drew tens of thousands of people annually to mourn the victims in China. The event was banned in 2020 during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, weeks before Beijing imposed the security law on Hong Kong to quell the 2019 massive anti-government protests.
Observers say their trial symbolizes the erosion of freedom of expression in the former British colony, which returned to Chinese rule in 1997.Lee and Chow are expected to be sentenced at a later date.
