Hong Kong court to hear closing arguments in Tiananmen activist trial

Lee Cheuk-tung, 69, and Zhou Hengdong, 41, who organized candlelight vigils to commemorate Beijing’s deadly 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square demonstrators, are on trial for “inciting subversion of state power”, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch condemned the trial as an attempt to “rewrite history.”

Now-defunct Hong Kong fraternity leaders Li Li and Mr Chow were charged in 2021 and have been in jail since then.

The trial began in January and lasted 22 days.

Dozens of clips were played in court, showing the defendants speaking at vigils, protests and media interviews over the years.

Hong Kong authorities have said the national security law does not have retroactive effect, but it is common for prosecutors to cite materials from before 2020 as evidence in such cases.

The alliance was formed in May 1989 amid calls in Hong Kong to support the pro-democracy movement led by students and workers in Beijing.

The organization’s main purposes include “building a democratic China” and “ending one-party rule.”

For more than three decades, the group organized candlelight vigils in the semi-autonomous city and later became a driving force in seeking compensation for those killed in the crackdown.

Prosecutors said the alliance had repeatedly called on China to “end one-party rule,” which they said amounted to subversion.

Li, a veteran labor activist and witness to the 1989 crackdown, told the court he had no animosity toward the Communist Party and hoped it would reform.

Ms. Zhou, her own lawyer, told the court that the coalition’s stance to “end one-party rule” meant calling for China to undergo a democratic transition.

-“Absurd Trial”-

Hong Kong was once the only place in China where people could openly mourn Beijing’s crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

But Beijing imposed a national security law on the former British colony in 2020 after massive and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests the previous year.

In September 2021, Hong Kong authorities arrested League leaders and raided the League Museum, which displays items preserved from the Tiananmen crackdown.

“This is a ridiculous trial where the accuser becomes the defendant,” Zhou wrote in a letter to the families of victims of the crackdown earlier this month, referring to the coalition’s decades of activism calling for justice for the victims’ families.

“But a trial is ultimately a public process that examines the facts and records testimony and evidence,” she added.

The third defendant in the case, 74-year-old former legislator Albert Ho, pleaded guilty in January.

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