BRUSHED OFF:
Judges rejected the activists’ defense that they believed they were acting within the law, saying that they were ‘bent on embracing the resistance line’
Hong Kong’s High Court yesterday convicted two pro-democracy activists of inciting subversion, highlighting their use of the phrase “end one-party dictatorship” in their political activities.Lee Cheuk-yan (李卓人) and Chow Hang-tung (鄒幸彤) were part of a group known for organizing annual vigils marking Beijing’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.Lee and Chow, the former chair and former vice-chair of a now-disbanded group, the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, could be sentenced to as much as 10 years in jail under a China-imposed National Security Law (NSL).
Tens of thousands of people on June 4, 2004, attend a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park marking Beijing’s Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy rallies.
It was the defendants’ repeated use of the phrase “end one-party dictatorship” rather than other political actions or beliefs that had breached the law, the judges said.“[The defendants] intended to cause others to lose confidence in the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] by stirring up hostility and causing division, so as to achieve the objective of undermining the fundamental basic system,” the judges said. “Even though they believed and envisaged that the acts of resistance may not necessarily involve the use of violence or threat of violence, those acts would be in breach of the NSL, and carry a risk of long-term imprisonment.”
