March 11 (UPI) — Three Hong Kong activists on Saturday were sentenced to 4 1/2 months in jail for refusing to cooperate with police during a probe of their now-disbanded protest organization.
The trio were sentenced under a national security law that allows for the arrest of citizens under a variety of security pretexts.
In practice, critics say Law 66 has been mainly used by pro-Beijing Hong Kong authorities to jail union organizers and pro-democracy protestors, with more than 200 people being charged under the law since its implementation.
The activists, Chow Hang-tung, Tsui Hon-kwong, and Tang Ngok-kwan, were members of the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, a protest movement known for holding vigils to commemorate the 1989 massacre by the Chinese government that followed the Tiananmen Square protests.
The Alliance was disbanded in 2021 by the government, which maintains it was acting as a “foreign agent.”
The Chinese government has demanded that the activists hand over information on the organization but they have refused. They were sentenced Saturday by a city-appointed magistrate who said he was seeking to “send a clear message to society that the law does not condone any violation” of the national security law, the South China Morning Post reported.
Tsui and Tang were released on bail pending appeal but Chow, who served as the alliance’s vice-chairperson, refused to be released due to the restrictions on her freedom of expression that would be required.
At sentencing Chow was defiant, telling the judge that activists would continue fighting “be it on the streets, in the courtroom or from a prison cell,” the newspaper said.
On Thursday, National Security Police in Hong Kong also arrested Elizabeth Tang, a veteran labor organizer, as she visited her husband, the imprisoned pro-democracy activist Lee Cheuk-yang at Stanley Prison.
