Chow Hang-Tung, Hong Kong
I am a lawyer and a women human rights defender (WHRDs) from Hong Kong. I advocated for the protection and promotion of labour rights and the rights of persecuted human rights defenders in mainland China.
I was one of the vice-chairs of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (the Hong Kong Alliance or HKA), a grassroots advocacy group established in 1989 in Hong Kong to campaign for the release of political prisoners and democratic reforms in China, and accountability for the extrajudicial killings and other violations by the Chinese authorities during the lethal crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen, Beijing in June 1989.
As a lawyer in Hong Kong, I also provided legal assistance to peaceful activists and protesters targeted by police and judicial actions for their involvement in pro-democracy activities.
I was arrested and detained on 4 June 2021 for publishing two social media posts to call on the public to join the annual peaceful vigil to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen massacre of civilians and protesters in Beijing. The authorities banned the vigil for two consecutive years under the pretext of combatting COVID-19.
On 13 December 2021, the Wan Chai District Court sentenced me to 12 months’ imprisonment under the Public Order Ordinance for ‘taking part in and inciting participation in the Tiananmen vigil in 2020’. Later on 4 January 2022, the West Kowloon Magistrate’s Court convicted me for ‘inciting others to participate in an illegal assembly’ based on the social media posts in 2021 and sentenced me to 15 months’ imprisonment, five to be served concurrently. This means I will spend a total of 22 months behind bars.
At the same time, I am still facing charges from September 2021 of ‘inciting subversion of state power’, together with two other members of the HKA. The indictment states that we were suspected of inciting others to subvert the Chinese regime in Hong Kong between 1 July 2020 and 8 September 2021.
In addition, four other executive committee members of the HKA and I were charged with ‘not complying with the requirement to provide information under Article 43 of the National Security Law of Hong Kong, when the police accused our organisation of being backed by ‘foreign agents’ and demanded it provide information for the police investigation.
CIVICUS Monitor rates Hong Kong as repressed.
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