Today, judgment was handed down in the case against the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China on a charge of incitement to subversion of state power. The now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance was fined HK$1.5 million. Former vice-chair Albert Ho, who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to five years and two months’ imprisonment; former chair Lee Cheuk-yan received seven years; and vice-chair Chow Hang-tung, who refused throughout to enter a plea in mitigation, received the heaviest sentence of seven years and three months.
For more than thirty years, what the Hong Kong Alliance did was to mourn the dead, preserve history, demand the truth and seek accountability — things that ought to be among the most basic expressions of humanity and conscience in any society. Now a Hong Kong court has recast them as endangering national security.
In the mitigation letter Chow Hang-tung submitted on 20 August, she wrote:
“As for the future, whether in prison or outside it, I will continue to work for the release of those in the democracy movement, for the vindication of the 1989 democracy movement, for accountability for the massacre, for an end to one-party rule, and for the building of a democratic Hong Kong and China. I will keep learning, keep preparing myself, keep trying different things, until the day democracy arrives. This is a promise I have made publicly countless times, a solemn vow I made to the dead amid that sea of candlelight, and I do not intend to be a person without teeth.
If doing so makes me a criminal forever, if the law truly cannot accommodate our convictions, then I would rather be a criminal than betray my conscience. Together with all Hong Kongers who refuse to accept their fate, I will keep walking this unfinished road to democracy.”
The New School for Democracy reaffirms its position:
Mourning June Fourth is not a crime.
Seeking democracy is not a crime.
Demanding the truth is not a crime.
Refusing to forget is not a crime.
What should be held to account is a regime that, in the name of national security, extinguishes freedom, erases history and persecutes its own people.
We call on the Hong Kong government to drop immediately all political prosecutions in the Hong Kong Alliance case, to release Lee Cheuk-yan, Chow Hang-tung, Albert Ho and all political prisoners, and to stop using the Hong Kong National Security Law and the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance to suppress the freedoms of Hong Kong people.
So long as there are still people who remember June Fourth, and still people who refuse to be silent, the candlelight the Hong Kong Alliance kept alive will not go out.