By Jessie Pang and Anson Law
HONG KONG (Reuters) – Hong Kong’s top court unanimously overturned on Thursday the convictions of three former members of a pro-democracy group that organised an annual candlelight vigil to mark China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, citing a miscarriage of justice.
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, with many liberal and popular civil society groups shuttered.
In their judgment, the five judges of the Court of Final Appeal, led by Chief Justice Andrew Cheung, said government prosecutors had redacted key facts.
That had “deprived the appellants of a fair trial, so that their convictions involved a miscarriage of justice,” they added.
The now disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China used to organise the annual candlelight vigil to commemorate those who died in the bloody crackdown in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Former vice-chairperson Chow Hang Tung, 40, and two other former executive committee members Tang Ngok-kwan and Tsui Hon-kwong were sentenced to 4-1/2 months in March 2023.
They had been found guilty of not complying with a national security police request for information on the Alliance’s members, donors and finances.
Tang welcomed the ruling, saying, “Today we can prove that the Alliance is not a foreign agent … justice is in the hearts of the people,” in remarks to reporters outside the court.
The group was designated a “foreign agent” for an unidentified organisation after being accused of receiving HK$20,000 from it.
But some key details of the case, such as the identity of overseas organisations and individuals alleged to have ties to the group, were redacted, drawing criticism from the judges.
“By redacting the only potential evidential basis for establishing such facts, the prosecution disabled itself from proving its case,” the judges wrote.
The national security law imposed by Beijing allows the police chief to seek information believed to be necessary for the prevention and investigation of offences.
During the appeal hearing, however, Chow, who represented herself, said the claim that the Alliance was a foreign agent had been difficult to prove because it was untrue.
“A deer cannot become a horse just because someone believes it to be,” she added.
Chow 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.”
Detained since September 2021, Chow has also been charged with incitement to subversion, along with two former Alliance leaders, Albert Ho and Lee Cheuk-yan.
(This story has been corrected to fix Chow Hang Tung’s age to 40, not 39, in paragraph 6)
(Reporting by Jessie Pang and Anson Law; Editing by James Pomfret and Clarence Fernandez)
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