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A Hong Kong court on Friday convicted Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung of inciting others to subvert state power, according to a summary of the judgment. The pair, who face a maximum of 10 years in prison with sentencing set for a later date, had been leaders of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. Albert Ho, the third defendant in the case, pleaded guilty to the same charge in January, as Reuters reported from the opening of proceedings that month.
The activists were charged in connection with their calls to end one-party rule, which prosecutors said amounted to seeking an end to Chinese Communist Party leadership through unlawful means, according to details aired during the trial covered by Al Jazeera. Lee, aged 69, and Chow, 41, had helped organize annual vigils in Hong Kong that for decades marked the only large-scale public commemoration of the 1989 events on Chinese soil. Those gatherings were banned in 2020, first under coronavirus measures that authorities never lifted, and the national security law imposed that year expanded the definition of subversion, DW noted in its reporting on the case.
The alliance itself was founded in May 1989 to back student protesters in Beijing, continuing afterward to press for accountability over the military crackdown that left hundreds to several thousand dead, the BBC detailed in its account of the group’s history. Over the following decades the group demanded that Chinese authorities reverse their verdict on the protests, release political prisoners and advance democratic reforms in Hong Kong. Chow represented herself in the trial and urged the court in May to safeguard the dignity of the law, warning judges against becoming accomplices to a crackdown on speech, according to an account published by Hong Kong Free Press.
Chow had previously been convicted of inciting attendance at a banned 2021 vigil, though Hong Kong’s top court overturned that ruling in 2022 after finding the police ban insufficiently justified, the BBC reported. The current case, which opened on January 22, 2026, with heavy police presence around the courthouse, has been widely regarded as a test of remaining space for free speech and historical remembrance, Reuters stated. Rights organizations condemned the proceedings from the outset, with Al Jazeera noting their criticism of the charges as an attack on peaceful commemoration.
Amnesty International labeled both Lee and Chow prisoners of conscience who had committed no recognizable crime. Sarah Brooks, the group’s deputy regional director for East Asia, stated that the case relies on vague and overly broad definitions of subversion. “Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan are prisoners of conscience who should never have been prosecuted in the first place. They must be released immediately and unconditionally,” Brooks said.
Chow told the BBC in a 2021 interview weeks before one of her arrests that she was prepared to face detention under the changing climate in Hong Kong. “I am willing to pay the price for fighting for democracy,” she added at the time. The convictions arrive after the alliance disbanded in 2021 while under official investigation, a development tracked by multiple outlets including Reuters, which has framed the proceedings as part of broader efforts to curb public discussion of the Tiananmen events.
