Hong Kong Activists Jailed Over Tiananmen Vigils

Published: 11 September 2026. The English Chronicle Desk. The English Chronicle Online

Three prominent Hong Kong democracy activists who helped organise annual vigils commemorating China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown have been sentenced to lengthy prison terms, marking another major development in the city’s continuing national-security crackdown.

Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, was sentenced to seven years in prison, while Chow Hang-tung, 41, received seven years and three months. Albert Ho, 74, another former leader of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, was sentenced to five years and two months after pleading guilty earlier this year. The Hong Kong Alliance itself was fined HK$1.5 million, or roughly US$191,000.

The sentences followed a landmark national-security trial that centred on the activists’ efforts to preserve public discussion of the Tiananmen Square crackdown and their repeated political demand for an end to one-party rule in China.

Lee and Chow were convicted last month of inciting subversion under Hong Kong’s National Security Law. Both had pleaded not guilty. Ho, who previously chaired the Alliance and was also a former chairman of Hong Kong’s Democratic Party, admitted the charge in January.

The case has become a powerful symbol of how dramatically Hong Kong’s political environment has changed.

For decades, Hong Kong was one of the few places under Chinese sovereignty where people could publicly commemorate the events of 4 June 1989. Every year, thousands gathered for candlelight vigils in Victoria Park to remember those killed when Chinese troops and tanks were sent into Beijing to crush the pro-democracy demonstrations centred on Tiananmen Square.

Those gatherings became one of the most visible demonstrations of the political differences between Hong Kong and mainland China.

While discussion of the 1989 crackdown remains heavily restricted and censored on the mainland, Hong Kong’s separate legal and political system had traditionally allowed a much wider degree of public expression. The annual vigil therefore represented more than a memorial event. It was also an expression of Hong Kong’s distinctive freedoms and its unresolved relationship with Beijing.

That changed after 2019.

Hong Kong experienced months of large-scale pro-democracy protests, followed by the introduction of the National Security Law in June 2020. Beijing and Hong Kong authorities have defended the legislation as essential to restoring stability after the unrest. Critics, however, argue that it has substantially restricted freedom of expression, assembly and political opposition.

The annual Tiananmen vigil was effectively brought to an end at the same time.

Authorities initially cited coronavirus restrictions when prohibiting the 2020 gathering, but the vigil did not return after the pandemic restrictions ended. The Alliance was subsequently investigated, its leaders arrested and the organisation eventually disbanded.

Lee, Chow and Ho were charged in 2021.

Their trial focused heavily on the political objectives and activities of the Alliance. Prosecutors argued that the group’s repeated calls to “end one-party dictatorship” amounted to incitement to undermine China’s political system.

The three judges handling the national-security case accepted that argument.

In their August judgment, the court said Lee and Chow intended to cause people to lose confidence in the Chinese Communist Party by encouraging hostility and division. The judges rejected arguments from the defence that the activists believed they were exercising rights that had historically been protected in Hong Kong.

The court said the defendants’ actions were capable of creating a risk of undermining China’s fundamental political system even if they did not advocate violence.

The verdict therefore turned on an important question: whether political advocacy that had once been tolerated in Hong Kong could now be treated as a national-security offence.

For the prosecution and the Hong Kong government, the answer was yes.

For the defendants and their supporters, the case represented something very different.

Chow, a human-rights barrister who represented herself during the proceedings, argued that the law itself was effectively on trial. Her position was that the activists had continued to express political beliefs and commemorate an historical event within what they understood to be the boundaries of Hong Kong’s former legal system.

The court rejected that defence.

On Friday, the atmosphere inside the courtroom was emotional but restrained. As proceedings began, Chow and Lee reportedly stood and smiled towards a packed public gallery, while Ho appeared serious. After Lee’s sentence was announced, he appeared to pray as he was taken from the dock. Chow blew a kiss towards people sitting in the gallery.

Outside the courtroom, their families expressed anger and grief.

Elizabeth Tang, Lee’s wife, described the sentencing as a sad day and said she could not accept that her husband would have to spend several more years in prison. She said Lee intended to appeal.

Chow’s mother, Medina Chow, addressed supporters outside the court and urged them not to lose heart or feel guilty because of the verdict. Her comments reflected the determination of supporters to portray the activists not as criminals but as people who had accepted personal risks in defending democratic principles.

The sentences have also drawn international criticism.

Human-rights organisations have described the punishment as evidence of the shrinking space for dissent in Hong Kong. Amnesty International characterised the case as a tragedy affecting not only the activists but also survivors and victims of the 1989 crackdown and younger generations who have increasingly limited opportunities to discuss the event publicly.

Human Rights Watch similarly criticised the sentences, arguing that peaceful commemoration of Tiananmen should not constitute a crime.

Hong Kong and Chinese authorities strongly reject such criticism.

National-security officials argue that the activists were not simply commemorating history but using political activity to undermine China’s constitutional order. Hong Kong’s national-security police described the trial as fair, impartial, open and transparent. China’s National Security Office in Hong Kong accused the defendants of attempting to encourage hostility towards the state and undermine the Communist Party’s leadership.

Beijing has consistently maintained that the National Security Law was necessary after the unrest of 2019. Chinese and Hong Kong authorities say the legislation restored stability and created conditions for the city’s future economic development.

Critics counter that stability has come at the expense of political freedoms.

The Tiananmen case is particularly significant because the activists’ alleged offence was closely connected to an event that occurred more than three decades ago and outside Hong Kong.

The 1989 demonstrations began as a movement involving students and other citizens demanding political reform and greater accountability. The protests eventually attracted huge crowds in Beijing and elsewhere in China. On 4 June, the Chinese government ordered troops and armoured vehicles into central Beijing. The crackdown resulted in hundreds, and possibly thousands, of deaths, although the exact toll remains disputed.

The Chinese government has never permitted an open public reckoning with the crackdown.

For years, the Hong Kong Alliance played a central role in keeping the memory alive.

Founded in 1989, the organisation campaigned for the Chinese government to acknowledge responsibility for the crackdown, release political prisoners and introduce democratic reforms. Its annual vigils became among the largest public commemorations of Tiananmen anywhere in the world.

Organisers sometimes claimed that more than 100,000 people attended the events, while police estimates were generally lower.

The vigils were also deeply personal for many Hongkongers. Families brought children, candles were lit and speeches were delivered about democracy, human rights and political freedom. Chow herself had attended Tiananmen commemorations since childhood.

The disappearance of that tradition has therefore been symbolic as well as practical.

The prison sentences handed down this week reinforce the extent to which Hong Kong’s political environment has changed since 2020.

The case also comes amid a wider series of national-security prosecutions involving prominent democracy activists. Earlier this month, high-profile activist Joshua Wong pleaded guilty to a separate charge of colluding with foreign entities under the National Security Law. He remains imprisoned over an earlier subversion conviction.

Taken together, the cases demonstrate that Hong Kong’s former opposition movement has been substantially weakened through arrests, prosecutions, disqualifications and the dissolution of political organisations.

Yet the Tiananmen activists’ supporters argue that imprisonment cannot erase the history they sought to preserve.

For them, the central issue is not simply whether a group was legally entitled to organise a particular vigil. It is whether an entire generation of Hongkongers can continue to remember and discuss one of the most consequential episodes in modern Chinese history.

The government insists that national security must take priority over political activities it considers threatening to China’s constitutional order.

The activists and international critics see the same events through another lens: the transformation of peaceful remembrance into a criminal offence.

That disagreement is unlikely to disappear with the sentencing.

Lee, Chow and Ho have already paid a substantial personal price. Their years in detention and the prison terms imposed this week represent a dramatic conclusion to a campaign that once brought tens of thousands of people together under candlelight.

For Hong Kong, however, the significance extends far beyond the fate of three individuals.

The Tiananmen vigils once provided a rare public space where history, memory and political expression could coexist. Their disappearance, followed by the imprisonment of the people who organised them, illustrates the profound transformation of Hong Kong’s civic landscape.

The candles may no longer be legally permitted in the way they once were, but the question at the centre of the case remains: how far can a government restrict public memory in the name of national security?

For the activists’ supporters, that question is now being answered in prison sentences measured not in months but in years.

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