Hong Kong Convicts Two Activists Who Lit Candles for Tiananmen's Dead

A Verdict Decades in the Making

For three decades, Hong Kong's candlelight vigil was the only large-scale public commemoration in China of the Tiananmen Square massacre, regularly drawing tens of thousands of people annually to mourn the victims. On Friday, August 21, the people who made that tradition possible were convicted for it.

Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, and Chow Hang-tung, 41, former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, were found guilty of "incitement to subversion" for their role in organizing candlelit vigils to mark Beijing's deadly 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. The two had pleaded not guilty and were charged in 2021. A third former leader, Albert Ho, 74, had pleaded guilty to the same charge in January.

The Charges and What They Mean

The closely watched national security case was seen as a bellwether for freedom of expression in the Chinese city. Chow, a human rights barrister who represented herself, told the court in May that the law itself was on trial. That argument did not persuade the judges.

In a summary of the verdict reasoning, the judges said Lee and Chow had "all along been hostile towards the CCP and the Central Government under its leadership… They adhered to the course of resisting the Central Government and refusing to make any compromise." The pair could face up to 10 years in jail, with sentencing expected at a later date.

Security was ramped up outside the courthouse on Friday, with police checking the identities of many of those lining up to attend and searching their bags. Tang Ngok-kwan, a former member of the alliance that organized the vigils, told reporters that police barred him from entering the court building because he refused to give up copies of past news reports about the crackdown. The scene outside the courtroom was, in many ways, a mirror of what the trial itself represented.

The Slow Erasure of Hong Kong's Civil Society

Hong Kong's unique role in keeping alive the memory of the Tiananmen Massacre ended after Beijing imposed the National Security Law on the city in 2020 and rapidly dismantled Hong Kong's once-vibrant civil society and fundamental freedoms. The vigil was banned in 2020 during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, just weeks before Beijing imposed its security law on Hong Kong to quell the 2019 massive anti-government protests. In 2021, authorities forced the Hong Kong Alliance to disband.

Many leading activists have been jailed under the same law, including pro-democracy former media tycoon Jimmy Lai. Friday's verdict was "no surprise," said Mark Clifford, president of the Committee for Freedom in Hong Kong Foundation, adding that Hong Kong's "twisted" judicial system had already decided the pair were guilty in 2021. He described Lee and Chow as "true Chinese patriots" who were silenced because they "spoke truth to power" and "held up a mirror to the Chinese Communist Party."

What Comes Next

The verdict is the latest chapter in a years-long crackdown by Hong Kong authorities against publicly marking the moment in 1989 when the ruling Chinese Communist Party sent tanks in to violently quell peaceful, student-led democracy protests in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. With sentencing still ahead, the world will be watching to see just how harshly the court chooses to punish two people whose crime, in the eyes of many, was holding candles in a park.

The case sends an unmistakable signal — not just to Hong Kongers, but to anyone watching from the outside — about where the limits of permissible memory now lie. A city that once stood as the one place on Chinese soil where June 4 could be spoken aloud has now prosecuted the very people who did the speaking. The candles are out, and the question that lingers is whether they can ever be lit again.