Hong Kong court finds Tiananmen crackdown commemorators guilty of subversion News
Wrightbus, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Hong Kong court finds Tiananmen crackdown commemorators guilty of subversion

The Hong Kong Court of First Instance on Friday found Chow Hang-tung, Lee Cheuk-yan and their now-disbanded organization, the Hong Kong Alliance, guilty of a national security offense under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law (NSL).

Three NSL-designated judges unanimously ruled that the defendants’ advocacy, through peaceful June 4 annual vigils, for “the end of one-party dictatorship” amounted to an incitement to subversion. They found that there could be no “natural end” to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s leadership; the advocacy must be an incitement to overthrow or undermine China’s basic system.

Chow and Lee argued at trial that China’s basic system is that all power in the country belongs to the people under Article 2 of the Chinese Constitution. The court, however, considered the 2018 constitutional amendment to Article 1 to be also a part of the country’s basic system. The amendment enshrines that the CCP’s leadership is the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics, which is China’s basic system. Thus, the organization’s advocacy is incompatible with the Chinese Constitution, amounting to an unlawful act as a criminalizing element for subversion.

As Article 18 of the city’s Basic Law provides that Chinese national laws do not apply in the city, one issue the court faced was whether an act incompatible with the Chinese Constitution is unlawful in Hong Kong. Without commenting on which exact articles apply in the region, the judges wrote that the Chinese Constitution is the source of Hong Kong laws; those compatible with “One Country, Two Systems” apply in the city. They picked the relevant articles as the basis for the conviction.

Although the court followed its previous rulings that “other unlawful means” within the crime of subversion includes unconstitutional acts by members of the general public, this decision is awaiting adjudication before the city’s apex court.

The government welcomed the ruling, reiterating that the defendants were hostile towards the CCP and the Chinese government. Chief Executive John Lee vowed to safeguard national security and hold offenders accountable.

On the other hand, Amnesty International described the verdict as “dismaying” and “the government’s deliberate campaign to silence activists who seek accountability for the Tiananmen crackdown on June 4, 1989. The group called for their immediate release.

Since September 2021, the defendants have been facing a count of incitement to subversion under Article 22 of the 2020 China-imposed national security law. The law criminalizes any acts involving force, threat of force, or unlawful means to overthrow China’s basic system and/or “state power.” While another former chairman Albert Ho Chun-yan pleaded guilty, the three defendants pleaded not guilty. From the day of Chow’s arrest on September 8, 2021, she has been in custody for 1,808 days before the court handed down a guilty verdict. Arrested on February 28, 2020, Lee was serving his 20-month jail sentence for participating in unauthorized assemblies. He has remained in custody since then.

The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China–the organizational defendant in the case–organized annual vigils every year to commemorate the victims of the Tiananmen crackdown up until 2020. Former chief executive Carrie Lam disbanded the alliance in 2021, claiming it was necessary in the interest of national security.

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