Jimmy Lai, the founder of Apple Daily, Hong Kong’s most popular pro-democracy newspaper, forced into shutdown by police in June, former journalist Gwyneth Ho, 31, who became involved in politics during the 2019 protest movement, and rights lawyer of the man Chow Hang-tung, 36, vice-president of the Hong Kong Alliance, were sentenced, Monday, December 13, to thirteen, twelve and six months respectively in prison.
They were the only ones, among the twenty activists incriminated for the “illegal assembly” of June 4, 2020, to have chosen to plead not guilty. They are all three also prosecuted, moreover, under the new national security law, imposed in June 2020 by Beijing in order to criminalize all forms of political dissent in the special administrative region.
Other heavyweights from Hong Kong’s pro-democracy opposition were also sentenced to terms ranging from nine to fourteen months in prison, the heaviest going to Lee Cheuk-yan – former Labor MP and longtime Alliance chairman. (Alliance in support of the patriotic and democratic movements of China, the movement which has always organized the vigils of June 4). About fifteen other activists already convicted at the beginning of the year for this same vigil were given sentences ranging from six to ten months of imprisonment, some suspended. Jimmy Lai and Lee Cheuk-yan’s sentences will, however, be confused with those they are currently serving.
The 24-page judgment of the Wan Chai District Court which recapitulates the facts in the trial of Jimmy Lai establishes that an authorization had been requested from April 23 by the Alliance so that the vigil can be held, as every year, in the same place, on the football fields of Victoria Park , and on the same date, on the evening of June 4. This vigil, which has always taken place with the greatest dignity, is one of the most important dates on the Hong Kong calendar. Because every June 4 evening, since that of 1989, Hong Kong very conscientiously played its role of torchbearer of remembrance; aware of being the only city in China to have the freedoms allowing it to openly commemorate the dead, the exact number of which is still unknown, who fell on the outskirts of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square during the bloody repression of the People’s Liberation Army which put an end to months of student mobilization demanding democratic reforms in China.
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