HONG KONG - A Hong Kong court found on Friday two activists, who organised annual vigils marking China's deadly Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, guilty of "incitement to subversion".
Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, and Chow Hang-tung, 41, "incited other persons to organise, plan, commit or participate in acts by unlawful means with a view to subverting the state power", a press summary handed out to reporters said.
A three-judge panel said they found both defendants had committed acts that constituted "overthrowing or undermining the basic system... established by the Constitution" of China.
They face a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail, with sentencing expected at a later date.
Lee and Chow were charged with subversion crimes in 2021 and have been behind bars since, under a Beijing-imposed national security law.
On Friday, they sat silently in the dock as the judges returned their verdict.
Hong Kong and Macau used to be the only places on Chinese soil that permitted public vigils to mourn those who died on June 4, 1989, when Beijing sent troops and tanks to crush protests calling for political reform in and around the capital's Tiananmen Square.
The defendants were leaders of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance, the group that organised annual vigils in the city's Victoria Park.
But public commemoration has been effectively banned since Beijing imposed a national security law on Hong Kong in 2020, following huge and sometimes violent pro-democracy protests the year before.
Prosecutors said the two leaders' remarks over the years were not merely expressions of personal opinion, "but were intended to incite others to commit unlawful acts".
They accused Lee and Chow in previous hearings of "endangering national security in the name of human rights", adding that freedom of speech and association are "not absolute rights".
A third defendant, 74-year-old former lawmaker Albert Ho, pleaded guilty in January. A guilty plea typically results in a reduced sentence.
'Memory of its own atrocities'
Friday's conviction showed "how public displays of mourning have become a crime in Hong Kong," Human Rights Watch's Asia director Elaine Pearson said in a statement.
"These activists exposed the Chinese government's fears of the memory of its own atrocities, which treats remembrance as a national security threat."
Chow said in a blog post ahead of Friday's verdict that "justice lies in the hearts of the people, there is no need to revere judgments handed down from above, and a single verdict is of little consequence".
She added that since the trial began, prison officers have changed the way of escorting her.
"Rather than simply handcuffing, (I'm) now fully restrained with handcuffs, leg irons, a waist chain and a leg chain, and am led along by Correctional Services staff on a metal chain, much like a dog on a lead."
The case has been widely criticised for exemplifying the erosion of freedom of expression in the city.
"The prosecution case… sends a powerful and chilling message to civil society: any critique of the state and its policies, however peacefully made, is no longer welcome in Hong Kong," Urania Chiu, a law lecturer at Oxford Brookes University, told Agence-France Presse (AFP).
