Hong Kong’s court system entered the final stretch of a national security trial on Monday as judges heard closing arguments in a case brought against former organizers of the annual Tiananmen Square crackdown vigils. Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan, both former leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, have pleaded not guilty after being charged in 2021 under a Beijing-imposed national security law.
The prosecution’s approach has focused on the alliance’s political messaging and how prosecutors characterized its meaning. During the trial, prosecutors centered their argument on “ending one-party rule,” describing that advocacy as having a purpose beyond peaceful commemoration and as related to inciting others to use unlawful means. The government’s framing has also included a position that the defendants were not advocating for constitutional change, and on Monday prosecutors sought to draw a sharp line between rights claims and what they described as the limits of those rights under the national security law.
Prosecutor Ned Lai told the court that freedoms of speech, assembly and association are not unlimited rights. In court, Lai said, “The freedoms of speech, association and assembly mentioned by D2 and D4 are not ‘trump cards’ that can override the law,” referring to Lee Cheuk-yan and Chow Hang-tung by their defendant numbers.
Lee Cheuk-yan has denied that the alliance demand to “ending one-party rule” should be understood as an effort to remove the Communist Party’s leadership. He argued during the trial that the phrase instead points toward democracy and letting the people decide who leads them, and he said the Communist Party should not enforce “dictatorship.” In earlier proceedings, Lee also addressed the prosecution’s interpretation by maintaining that his statements were not aimed at undermining the party’s role through unlawful action.
Chow Hang-tung, who defended herself as a barrister, has also rejected the prosecution’s characterization of her writings and organizing. She has argued that her past work was not intended to incite action or hatred, and that it was intended to foster Hong Kongers’ understanding of mainland China, where many people, she said, also hoped to pursue democracy. Under the trial’s legal framework, the question before the court was whether those words and actions met the threshold for the national security charges prosecutors pursued.
Albert Ho is the alliance’s co-defendant in the case, and his procedural posture differed from the two defendants remaining on trial. When the trial began in January, Ho entered a guilty plea, a step that typically results in a sentence reduction, according to the way such pleas are handled in the criminal process. That plea meant the focus shifted to the contested case against Lee and Chow as the proceedings continued.
The trial, initially scheduled to last 75 days, was expected to end sooner, but judges have not yet indicated when they could deliver a verdict. The timeline reflects how the legal case has unfolded alongside the broader political context that Hong Kong officials and critics say has narrowed civic space in the years since the 1997 handover.
For decades, Hong Kong was the only place in China where a large-scale public commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown took place. Authorities banned the vigils in 2020, and both organizers were later charged in 2021. After COVID-19 restrictions were lifted, the former vigil site was occupied instead by a carnival organized by pro-Beijing groups, and people who tried to commemorate the anniversary on June 4 were detained.