# Hong Kong’s Tiananmen activists guilty in national security trial

- URL: https://talkfuse.com/story/hong-kongs-tiananmen-activists-guilty-in-national-security-trial/
- Published: 2026-08-21T02:59:46+00:00
- Original publisher: BBC World (publisher lean: Centre)
- Original article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1l10mdrld5o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss
- Topics: Asia, World

## Key points

- Two Hong Kong Tiananmen vigil organisers convicted of inciting subversion
- Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung face up to 10 years in jail
- Amnesty International calls them "prisoners of conscience", demands release

## Summary

Two prominent Hong Kong activists, Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung, have been found guilty of inciting subversion under the city's Beijing-imposed national security law, over their roles organising annual vigils to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. The verdict marks a further tightening of the law's use against pro-democracy figures and comes as Hong Kong's once-unique freedom to publicly mark the crackdown has been effectively eliminated, drawing condemnation from human rights groups who say the prosecution criminalises peaceful commemoration.

Lee, 69, and Chow, 41, face up to ten years in prison, with sentencing to be set later; a third defendant, Albert Ho, 74, had already pleaded guilty in January. All three were leaders of the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance, founded in 1989 to support the Tiananmen protesters and which for decades pressed authorities to acknowledge the crackdown and pursue democratic reform; its leaders have been detained since being charged in 2021. Public vigils, once held annually in Victoria Park, were banned in 2020 and never resumed, the same year the national security law took effect. Amnesty International called the pair "prisoners of conscience" and demanded their immediate release, arguing the case rests on vague definitions of subversion.

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Summarised by TalkFuse (https://talkfuse.com/). Quote the original publisher for the reporting and link this page for the summary and discussion.