Hong Kong Jails Lawyer for 10 More Months Over Tiananmen Vigil

(Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong activist Chow Hang Tung will serve nearly two years in prison over her role in a vigil commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown that authorities banned citing pandemic restrictions. 

Chow was convicted Tuesday at the West Kowloon Magistrates' Courts of inciting others to take part in an unauthorized assembly in June. She was sentenced to an additional 10 months behind bars bringing her total prison term to 22 months. 

Last month, she received a 12-month sentence for her role in the same banned vigil in 2020, alongside media mogul Jimmy Lai and former journalist Gwyneth Ho. Chow also faces charges of inciting subversion under the city's Beijing-imposed national security law, which carries sentences as long as life in prison.

Authorities banned the annual June 4 candlelit vigil that once attracted tens of thousands of people for two consecutive years, ostensibly over Covid-19 concerns. Chow, as deputy of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, helped to organize the vigil.

Chow responded defiantly as Magistrate Amy Chan attempted to stop her from summarizing the events of June 1989 in remarks after the verdict, with the judge saying it wasn't a platform to air political views. Chow was due to be sentenced later Tuesday. 

“These are all facts,” Chow said. “They are not my political opinions. The people who died in June 4 are the real victims. They should be in this court instead of me.”

Hong Kong was for decades the only place under Beijing's control where the Tiananmen crackdown could be openly discussed. While commemorating the event hasn't been officially outlawed, doing so has become much harder since Beijing imposed a national security law on the city last year that outlaws actions aimed at “overthrowing or undermining the basic system” of China's one-party government. 

As well as banning the once-annual vigil, authorities have arrested and jailed its organizers and shut down a museum dedicated to the incident. Statues memorializing the event were last month removed from three university campuses, libraries have removed books documenting the crackdown and Disney+ omitted an episode of “The Simpsons” from its local streaming selection that lampooned efforts to expunge history of the incident. 

Chow said she had merely urged people not to forget the Tiananmen crackdown, when presenting her own closing arguments last month, and urged the court not to engage in “the trial of speech.” 

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