A leader of a now-defunct Hong Kong group that held annual vigils to commemorate the Tiananmen crackdown has said it had concerns that the national security law could be used for “political suppression.” Alliance leaders (second from right to left) Albert Ho, Chow Hang-tung, and Lee Cheuk-yan hold candles on stage during a vigil in Victoria Park, Hong Kong, on June 4, 2019, to mark the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing. Photo: Isaac Lawrence/AFP. Chow Hang-tung, a former leader of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, told the prosecution on Thursday that the group held internal discussions about the law weeks before its implementation in late June 2020.
The discussions, held before the June 4 vigil that year, addressed “concerns that the national security law would be used as a tool for political suppression,” Chow told prosecutor Ivan Cheung.
“It could be used to suppress dissident voices, which is clearly what we were,” she said.
Chow, fellow leader Lee Cheuk-yan, and the Alliance are standing trial for “inciting subversion,” an offence under the Beijing-imposed national security law that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. Another leader, Albert Ho, who has pleaded guilty to the charges, was excused from attending the trial. The Alliance disbanded in 2021 after authorities banned the vigil for two years, citing Covid-19 restrictions, and arrested its leadership on national security charges.
Prosecutors allege that the group sought to incite others to overthrow CCP rule through its calls to “end one-party rule,” a core tenet of the group since its founding in 1989.
In response to Cheung’s questioning, Chow also confirmed that the Alliance supported Charter 08, a manifesto signed by Chinese dissidents and human rights activists in 2008, calling for political change, including an end to one-party rule. West Kowloon Law Courts Building. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP. She said that while the Alliance supported the general aims of the movement, disagreements could arise in terms of implementation, such as how China should be reformed.
‘Resistance’
Chow was also asked what the Alliance meant by “resist” in its 2020 vigil slogan: “Truth, Freedom, Life — Resist.”
“Was it the political system controlled by the Chinese Communist Party?” Cheung asked. Chow replied that the Alliance was resisting “all unjust oppression, not just in the political system, but every form of injustice.”
The same meaning applied to the 2021 slogan: “Resist, for Freedom and our Shared Destiny.”
The court was shown a video of the 2019 vigil, where Chow delivered a eulogy for those who were killed in the crackdown. “We reject this murderous government and vow to seek justice,” she said on stage at Victoria Park that year. “The resistance you started has become the fuel for many more resistance movements both inside and outside the country,” she also said that day, referring to the protesters at Tiananmen Square.
Various speakers took the stage, including Tiananmen survivor Liane Lee, who was a university student when she travelled to Beijing in 1989 in solidarity with the democracy movement. The Tiananmen vigil in Victoria Park on June 4, 2019. File photo: Holmes Chan/HKFP. The vigil ended with a call for participants to attend a rally days later on June 9 against the proposed extradition law that would trigger months of protests and unrest.
Lee – an Alliance leader and Chow’s co-defendant in the case – shouted slogans urging the public to “fill up Victoria Park” five days later and calling for the “draconian law” to be shelved.
Chow said on Thursday that the aim of the vigil was remembrance. “We had to do right by every warrior that comes, trembling, to share their testimony… The Alliance’s stance can only be described as too moderate, not too radical,” she said.
Responding to questions from the Alliance’s lawyer Priscilia Lam and Judge Alex Lee, Chow said that she believed calling for an end to one-party rule was not illegal.
She also confirmed, in response to Lam’s questions, that the Alliance had removed terms from its founding charter calling for the “overthrow” of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1994, and that the group had never called for “overthrowing or subverting the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Lam presented documents dating back to 2002 relating to the introduction of Hong Kong’s locally enacted national security legislation, Article 23, which said that the subversion offence had to be committed with “serious unlawful means.”
Chow said she was aware of such concepts, but the judges said that the two-decade-old documents were irrelevant to the current case.