Hong Kong court to deliver verdict for 2 prominent former Tiananmen vigil organizers

HONG KONG (AP) — A Hong Kong court is set to deliver a verdict Friday in a closely watched national security trial of two prominent activists linked to the city’s decades-long commemorations of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

The verdict is among the latest involving Hong Kong’s once-vibrant pro-democracy movement, which has largely been dismantled under a China-imposed security law.

Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung were leaders of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which for three decades organized candlelight vigils that drew tens of thousands annually to remember the crackdown’s victims. They pleaded not guilty to inciting subversion and face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Three government-vetted judges are expected to hand down the verdict at 10 a.m. local time.

The vigil 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.

Eric Lai, a senior fellow with the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, said the charge of inciting subversion was commonly used in mainland China to criminalize the acts of human rights lawyers, activists and intellectuals, including late Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo.

“We can see to what extent the court in Hong Kong falls into the level of the party-led judiciary in the mainland through the criminal verdict,” he said.

During the trial, prosecutors said the case was not political and focused on what they viewed as a call by the alliance to incite others to overthrow the leadership of China’s ruling Communist Party through unlawful means, pointing to “ending one-party rule,” one of the group’s core demands.

But Lee told the court that the call was not about ending the party’s leadership but about moving toward democracy, letting the people decide who leads them, and that the Communist Party should not enforce “dictatorship.”

Chow, a barrister who defended herself, said “ending one-party rule” means ending a state where power is unrestricted. She criticized how the standard for determining right and wrong was turned upside down in this case.

In her Patreon post Thursday, she recalled being shackled in handcuffs, and in waist and ankle chains, for trips to court from prison, saying she was walked by correctional service officers “like a dog."

“Justice lives in the hearts of the people. There is no need to look up to this kind of top-down ruling, and one verdict doesn’t matter much,” she said.

The trial, initially scheduled for 75 days, moved faster than expected and concluded its closing statements on the 24th day. When it began in January, Albert Ho, another defendant in the case, entered a guilty plea, a move that typically could result in a reduced sentence.

If Lee and Chow are convicted, they are expected to plead for lesser penalties at a separate hearing and could be sentenced at a later date alongside Ho.

Hundreds of people, and possibly thousands, were killed in the 1989 crackdown as tanks rolled into the center of Beijing. The crackdown was a pivotal moment in China’s modern history, determining that the market reform that transformed the country into the world’s second-largest economy would not be coupled with political liberalization.

After COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, the former vigil site in Hong Kong was occupied instead by a carnival organized by pro-Beijing groups. Some people who tried to commemorate the event near the site on June 4, the crackdown’s anniversary, were brought away by police.

Beijing said the 2020 security law was necessary for the city’s stability. Many leading activists were jailed under the same law, including pro-democracy former media tycoon Jimmy Lai. Under the drastic political changes, dozens of civil society groups also dissolved.

Before the alliance voted to disband in September 2021, police had sought details about the group, saying they had reasonable grounds to believe it was acting as a foreign agent.

The alliance rejected the allegations and refused to cooperate, resulting in Chow and two other core members each sentenced to 4 1/2 months in prison in a separate case in 2023. But the trio overturned their convictions at the city’s top court in 2025.