Three organizers of Hong Kong’s Tiananmen protest sentenced to prison | outside

The annual commemoration of the Tiananmen Protest, where the Chinese regime crushed bloody protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square for greater democracy, has been banned since 2020. That year, Chinese authorities pushed through a tough “national security law” that curbed dissent in Hong Kong.

Three leaders of the Hong Kong coalition, which has organized the celebrations for 30 years, were convicted last week of failing to hand over several documents to the police. It concerns the minutes of meetings and the history of financial transactions. The authorities requested the documents because the group was suspected of being a “foreign agent.”

Judge Peter Law stated that national security was of paramount importance and that punishment should be “sufficiently dissuasive”. Chow Hang Tong, who was arrested along with two other key members of the alliance, vowed to “fight the lie with the truth” in a provocative courtroom speech. “Condemn us to disobedience if necessary. But if the exercise of power is based on lies, then disobedience is the only way to be human,” he said.

On Saturday, the other two members of the coalition, Tang Ngoc Quan and Tsui Hun-kwong, were released pending appeal proceedings. On the other hand, Zhao is still in prison awaiting another trial, but it is also related to “national security”. Two other members of the Hong Kong coalition have already pleaded guilty in 2021 and 2022. They were each sentenced to three months in prison.