Activists with Hong Kong’s defunct Tiananmen vigil group who are appealing their conviction and sentencing in a national security case will learn their verdict within three months, a judge has said.
Chow Hang-tung, Tang Ngok-kwan and Tsui Hon-kwong – former members of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic democratic Movements of China – appeared at High Court on Thursday for the final day of their two-day appeal hearing.
The three activists were found guilty in March of failing to comply with a notice issued by national security police in August 2021 demanding information, including personal information, about standing committee members and staff. Under the security law, police can demand information from those deemed to be agents of foreign authorities or political organisations. The activists were jailed for four and a half months each.
On Wednesday, barrister Philip Dykes said the Alliance was not a foreign agent – the premise on which police demanded information from the group – and therefore did not have to comply with the request.
Dykes continued his arguments on Thursday, telling the court that the powers under the security law for police to request information were a “handy investigative tool,” but “not meant to be a multi-purpose Swiss army knife that can be deployed in a variety of circumstances to seek information where the body is not in fact a foreign agent.”
The lower court that found the three activists guilty had ruled earlier that there was no need to prove that an organisation or person is a foreign agent before serving them with a notice requiring them to provide information.
Judge Anna Lai said she would hand down the verdict within three months. Chow Hang-tung, who has been detained for over two years as she awaits a separate subversion trial, remains in custody, while bail was extended for Tang and Tsui.
Founded in 1989, the Alliance organised yearly mass vigils in the city to mark the anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing that year.
Members of the Alliance were arrested in September 2021 after refusing to comply with the demand from national security police for information. It disbanded later that month, joining dozens of other civil society groups that have been forced to shut in the wake of the national security law imposed in June 2020.
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