Tiananmen vigils ‘always promoted love, responsibility,’ Hong Kong activist tells subversion trial

2026-03-20 - 23:32

Hong Kong’s Tiananmen vigils had “always promoted love and responsibility” rather than “hatred and despair,” a democracy activist has told her national security trial. Chow Hang-tung, former leader of the group that organised Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen vigils, was escorted to Court of Final Appeal on June 8, 2023. File photo: Lea Mok/HKFP. Chow Hang-tung, a former leader of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, testified on Friday that the vigils had the power to unite participants, rejecting the accusation that the gatherings stoked hatred against the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Chow, co-defendant Lee Cheuk-yan, and the Alliance are standing trial for “inciting subversion,” an offence under the Beijing-imposed security law that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. For decades, the Alliance organised vigils at Victoria Park to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing, when hundreds, perhaps thousands, were killed as troops dispersed pro-democracy demonstrators in and around Tiananmen Square. ‘Love, not hate’ Chow, a barrister representing herself in the trial, recounted attending the vigils at Victoria Park as a child, describing them as “mesmerising” and “capable of bringing people together as one.” “The June 4th [Tiananmen crackdown] vigils had never become a place of hatred and despair even though they revolved around such a dark matter,” Chow said in Cantonese. “Instead, the gatherings had always promoted love and responsibility.” “They told people that when facing injustice, we must not stand by and watch, we must step forward and make the world a better place.” The vigils provided a space to remember and articulate human suffering, she said, which she argued was an essential part of the Alliance’s advocacy for democracy. The Tiananmen vigil in Victoria Park on June 4, 2019. File photo: Holmes Chan/HKFP. “The magic that allows Victoria Park to unite people throughout the years is love, not hate, as the prosecution claims,” she said. “The reason we insist on telling and recording the injustice was never to spread hatred, but to gather love.” Prosecutors allege that the Alliance sought to incite others to overthrow CCP rule through its calls to “end one-party rule,” a core tenet of the group since its founding in 1989. Chow denied that the Alliance had encouraged others to resort to “illegal means” to topple the CCP, arguing that the slogan was a demand for democratisation. She told the court that she organised a Tiananmen commemoration while she was studying at a university in the UK and joined the Alliance as a volunteer after graduating in 2010. At that time, she was working for a Chinese labour rights NGO. At the end of 2014, she decided to run for the Alliance’s executive committee, she said. UN submission She described her role as “researching and writing reports behind the scenes” due to her connections with Chinese activists and what she called a “repressive environment” for civil society after President Xi Jinping took power in 2012. Her work at the Alliance included submitting recommendations to the UN’s Universal Periodic Review of China – a top-level review of human rights records of UN member states – in 2018. The wide-ranging list highlighted China’s alleged “residential surveillance” and “arbitrary detention” against human rights activists and made suggestions on legal reforms. In court, Chow said the list was proof that the Alliance sought concrete reforms in China rather than using negative incidents to stoke hatred against China. “The negative incidents are real problems that need to be addressed. They are not means we use to incite others,” she said. From left: Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho, Chow Hang-tung. Photos: HKFP. She also drew the court’s attention to a 2018 joint protest by the Alliance and civil society groups in Hong Kong, in which Richard Tsoi, an ex-vice chair of the Alliance, read out a statement opposing China’s constitutional amendment that year. The amendment removed China’s two-term limit on the presidency and added CCP leadership as the “defining feature” of the country’s socialist system. Chow said that, during the protest, Tsoi was calling on China’s lawmakers to defend the constitution and implement human rights protections. “I can hardly see how we were advocating illegal means,” she said. The Alliance disbanded in 2021 after authorities banned the vigil for two years, citing Covid-19 restrictions, and arrested its leadership on national security allegations. Chow and Lee have been behind bars since September 2021. A third defendant, former lawmaker Albert Ho, pleaded guilty when the trial opened in January. Chow is set to resume her testimony on Monday.