Hong Kong, Dec 9, (dpa/GNA) – The founder of disbanded pro-democracy Hong Kong newspaper Apple Daily, Jimmy Lai, has been found guilty by a court in Hong Kong of unlawful assembly, for taking part in a banned Tiananmen vigil last year.
Lai, along with lawyer and co-organizer Chow Hang Tung, and activist Gwyneth Ho, were all convicted on charges of unlawful assembly at the Hong Kong District Court on Thursday.
Authorities charged 24 former politicians and activists for the June 4, 2020, candlelight vigil, in commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. All 24 have been convicted.
According the South China Morning Post, 10 of the convicted were handed prison sentences of up to 10 months, while three were given suspended sentences.
The remaining sentences are due to be announced on Monday.
Lai, 73, is currently serving a prison sentence on separate charges for his role in unauthorized assemblies during the 2019 anti-government protests in Hong Kong.
Condemnation by human rights groups came quickly following the verdicts.
“These convictions merely underline the pattern of the Hong Kong authorities’ extreme efforts, to exploit the law to press multiple trumped-up charges against prominent activists,” said Amnesty International deputy secretary general Kyle Ward.
Ward added that prosecuting people for peacefully remembering those who died at Tiananmen Square in 1989, was “an egregious attack on the rights to freedom of expression and assembly.”
For the past two years, police have banned the candlelight event, which draws large crowds, citing health risks associated with the Covid-19 pandemic as the reason.
Critics, however, saw the ban as part of a wider crackdown on dissent in the city, following anti-government protests earlier in 2020.
The protests have since been stamped out following the imposition of a national security law by Beijing.
Hong Kong’s security law is frequently used to target leaders of the pro-democracy movement, and to crack down on activities that Beijing considers subversive, separatist, terrorist or conspiratorial. In the view of critics, it serves to silence the opposition and cement the power of the Communist Party.
GNA