Court hears final arguments in trial of vigil organizers, hopes for July verdict

Chow Hang-tung [AP Photo]

A  Hong Kong court yesterday concluded final arguments in a national security trial for two former organizers of the city’s vigils remembering the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

Judge Alex Lee, one of the three government-vetted judges, said that they hoped to deliver a verdict in July for Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan, two former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China.

For decades, the now-defunct alliance organized the only large-scale public commemoration in China that attracted tens of thousands annually until the event was banned in 2020 during the first year of the coronavirus pandemic.

Chow and Lee were charged in 2021 with inciting subversion under the national security law, facing a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison if convicted. They pleaded not guilty in January.

In previous hearings, the prosecution has focused on “ending one-party rule,” one of the alliance’s core demands, arguing that the group’s advocacy was about inciting others to use unlawful means to overthrow the leadership of China’s ruling Communist Party.

Chow, a barrister who defended herself, said yesterday that her trial was a “very strange case,” because the defendants neither denied anything they had done nor argued that what they said didn’t reflect their thoughts.

Chow said that “ending one-party rule” means ending a state where power is unrestricted, and that a key question in the case is whether the law is really safeguarding the Chinese Communist Party to rule forever and banning the people from pushing forward democratization.

Chow argued that the standard for determining right and wrong has been turned upside down in this case.

“Speaking the truth has become inciting hatred, seeking justice has become exploiting suffering, limiting power has become violating the constitution, and returning power to the people has become subverting the state,” she said. MDT/AP