Jailed Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai (黎智英) was among three democracy campaigners convicted yesterday for taking part in a banned Tiananmen vigil as the prosecution of multiple people came to a conclusion.
Lai, the 74-year-old owner of the Apple Daily newspaper, which is now shuttered in Hong Kong, was found guilty of unlawful assembly charges alongside former journalist Gwyneth Ho (何桂藍) and human rights lawyer Chow Hang-tung (鄒幸彤).
Authorities had charged more than two dozen politicians and rights advocates over a vigil last year that commemorated the victims of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989. Police had banned such activities. The trio were the only ones to contest their charges in court, meaning they were the last to receive their verdict.
Photo: AFP
They argued that they went to light candles in a personal capacity and had not “incited” others to join an outlawed rally.
At one point, Chow, a trained barrister who represented herself in court, likened her actions to “tank man” — the figure who stood in front of a Chinese tank during the Tiananmen crackdown and became an icon.
However, District Court Judge Amanda Woodcock dismissed those arguments as “frankly nonsensical” and convicted them of charges including inciting and taking part in an unauthorized assembly.
“The reality was, any intention to come out and participate in the candlelight vigil in Victoria Park that night was an act of defiance and protest against the police,” Woodcock said.
Amnesty International described the verdicts as the latest “attack on the rights to freedom of expression and assembly” in Hong Kong and said authorities had criminalized a “peaceful, socially distanced vigil.”
The convictions come as authorities crack down on dissent in Hong Kong and reconfigure the once outspoken finance hub in mainland China’s authoritarian image after huge democracy protests two years ago.
In practical terms, the latest verdicts make minimal difference to those convicted.
Lai, Chow and Ho are among dozens of people already behind bars facing separate prosecutions under a National Security Law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong last year.
However, their prosecution illustrates how much the gap has narrowed between Hong Kong and the mainland, where authorities have long sought to scrub memories and official records of Tiananmen.
For three decades, Hong Kong’s annual June 4 candlelight vigil would attract tens of thousands of people, which — with its slogans for democracy and ending one-party rule in China — became a symbol for the political freedoms enjoyed in the territory.
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
SCAM CLAMPDOWN: About 130 South Korean scam suspects have been sent home since October last year, and 60 more are still waiting for repatriation Dozens of South Koreans allegedly involved in online scams in Cambodia were yesterday returned to South Korea to face investigations in what was the largest group repatriation of Korean criminal suspects from abroad. The 73 South Korean suspects allegedly scammed fellow Koreans out of 48.6 billion won (US$33 million), South Korea said. Upon arrival in South Korea’s Incheon International Airport aboard a chartered plane, the suspects — 65 men and eight women — were sent to police stations. Local TV footage showed the suspects, in handcuffs and wearing masks, being escorted by police officers and boarding buses. They were among about 260 South
A former flight attendant for a Canadian airline posed as a commercial pilot and as a current flight attendant to obtain hundreds of free flights from US airlines, authorities said on Tuesday. Dallas Pokornik, 33, of Toronto, was arrested in Panama after being indicted on wire fraud charges in US federal court in Hawaii in October last year. He pleaded not guilty on Tuesday following his extradition to the US. Pokornik was a flight attendant for a Toronto-based airline from 2017 to 2019, then used fake employee identification from that carrier to obtain tickets reserved for pilots and flight attendants on three other
RSS