Three pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong had been sentenced to jail and served sentences for refusing to hand over information to authorities. A court has quashed their conviction in a rare win for the movement.
Hong Kong’s top court ruled in favor of three pro-democracy activists on Thursday after they had been jailed for refusing to give information to authorities.
Chow Hang-tung, Tang Ngok-kwan and Tsui Hon-kwong, held annual vigils for the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre as part of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements.
They had been sentenced to prison in 2023 after they were found guilty of not supplying information about the group’s members and finances to the national security police. They received a sentence of 4.5 months and have already served their sentences.
On Thursday, the five judges of the Court of Final Appeal said government prosecutors had redacted key facts.
This “deprived the appellants of a fair trial, so that their convictions involved a miscarriage of justice,” the judges said.
Pro-democracy activists hail ruling
The ruling is a rare victory for Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement in which scores of activists have been jailed or forced into exile under pressure from controversial national security laws.
“This is hugely gratifying for those who support the Alliance and its volunteers,” Tang, a former executive of the group, told reporters outside the court. “I hope we can prove in the future that the 1989 democracy movement [in China] was not a counter-revolutionary riot.”
Chow, the group’s former vice-chair, urged the courts to end complicity in police abuse.
“A police state is created by the complicity of the court in endorsing such abuses,” she said. “This kind of complicity must stop now.”
Chow has also been charged with incitement to subversion. She has been detained since 2021.
