Hong Kong court convicts 3 activists who organized Tiananmen vigils

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Three Hong Kong activists have been convicted after they refused to provide information to authorities required by national security policy. They had been arrested in 2021 during a crackdown on Hong Kong's civil society sector following the passage of a wide-ranging national security law.

The three activists now face up to six months in prison and a fine of nearly $13,000. They said they didn't cooperate with the policy because they believed the state had arbitrarily designated them foreign agents without providing evidence.

Chow Hang-tung, Tang Ngok-kwan and Tsui Hon-kwong were organizers in the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, an advocacy organization best known for holding annual vigils to commemorate the victims of the Tiananmen massacre in Beijing, the 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists in which Chinese troops fired on their own citizens, killing thousands. The exact death toll is unknown and mentions of the massacre are heavily censored in mainland China.

One of the activists, Chow Hang-tung, was arrested on a separate national security charge of subversion in 2021 and is already in prison.

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