The Hong Kong District Court yesterday sentenced democracy activist and business tycoon Jimmy Lai (黎智英) to 13 months in jail for urging participation in last year’s banned Tiananmen vigil, as it also convicted seven others on similar charges and handed out sentences of up to 14 months.
The Hong Kong Legislative Council has banned the candlelight vigil for the past two years on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19, although it is widely believed that the ban is intended to become permanent.
Lai, the founder of the now-shuttered pro-democracy Apple Daily, had already been jailed for taking part in pro-democracy protests for which he is to serve a total of 20 months.
Photo: AP
In the latest case, he was convicted on Thursday of inciting others to take part in the unauthorized assembly to memorialize those killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre.
Two defendants convicted along with Lai, lawyer Chow Hang-tung (鄒幸彤) and former reporter Gwyneth Ho (何桂藍), were sentenced to 12 and six months respectively for participating in the vigil.
Chow was also sentenced for inciting others to join.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The trio had pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Others sentenced on Monday included Lee Cheuk-yan (李卓人), the former chairman of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China. Lee received 14 months for organizing last year’s unauthorized assembly, during which thousands of people gathered to light candles and sing songs in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park, despite police warnings that they might be breaking the law.
The remainder were given sentences ranging from four months, two weeks to nine months.
The Hong Kong Alliance previously organized a candlelight vigil each June, the only large-scale public commemoration on Chinese soil of the 1989 crackdown in Beijing.
More than a dozen activists had already been convicted over the banned vigil, most of whom pleaded guilty, including outspoken activist Joshua Wong (黃之鋒), who was given 10 months in jail for participating. He was already in jail after a previous conviction on other charges related to his activism.
Two other activists in the case, Nathan Law (羅冠聰) and Sunny Cheung (張崑陽), fled Hong Kong.
Lai, 73, is serving a separate 14-month jail term for other convictions from earlier this year, also related to unauthorized rallies in 2019.
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