A Hong Kong court is expected to begin hearing closing arguments in the case of two democracy activists facing national security charges on Monday, as the trial enters its final stages.
Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, and Chow Hang-tung, 41, who organised candlelight vigils to mark Beijing’s deadly crackdown on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square in 1989, are standing trial for “incitement to subversion”, which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail.
The trial has been condemned by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch as an attempt at “rewriting history”.
Lee and Chow, leaders of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance, were charged in 2021 and have been behind bars since then.
The trial, which began in January, took place over 22 days.
Dozens of clips were played in court, showing the defendants speaking at vigils, protests and press interviews over the years.
Hong Kong authorities say that the national security law has no retroactive effect, but it is common for prosecutors to cite pre-2020 material as evidence in such cases.
The Alliance was founded in May 1989 amidst calls in Hong Kong to support the democratic movement led by students and workers in Beijing.
The group’s key tenets included “building a democratic China” and “ending one-party rule”.
For more than three decades thereafter, the group organised candlelit vigils in the semi-autonomous city and subsequently became the driving force seeking redress on behalf of those who died in the crackdown.
Prosecutors said the Alliance had repeatedly called for the “end of one-party rule” in China, which they said amounted to subverting state power.
Lee, a veteran labour activist and a witness to the 1989 crackdown, told the court he felt no enmity towards the Communist Party and hoped it would reform.
Chow, a barrister who is representing herself, told the court that the Alliance’s position of “ending one-party rule” meant calling for a democratic transition in China.
– ‘An absurd trial’ –
Hong Kong used to be the only place in China where people could publicly mourn Beijing’s deadly crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.
But Beijing imposed a national security law on the former British colony in 2020 following huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests the year before.
In September 2021, Hong Kong authorities arrested Alliance leaders and raided its museum, which exhibited preserved items from the Tiananmen crackdown.
Earlier this month, Chow wrote in a letter to a group of families of victims of the crackdown that “this is an absurd trial where the plaintiff has become the defendant”, referring to the Alliance’s decades of activism calling for justice for the families.
“But the trial is, ultimately, a public process that can examine facts and record testimony and evidence,” she added.
A third defendant in the case, 74-year-old Albert Ho, a former lawmaker, pleaded guilty in January.
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