Jimmy Lai and 7 Others Jailed for Banned Tiananmen Vigil

The unauthorised gathering on June 4, 2020 in Victoria Park

Today Apple Daily founder and chairman Jimmy Lai Chee-ying and seven others were sentenced from 4.5 months to 14 months for their roles in last year's banned Tiananmen candlelight vigil.

District Judge Amanda Woodcock called for stiff sentences as the defendants defied a police ban and the law, and did not seem to care about the pandemic when gathering for an unauthorised assembly.

People were told to commemorate their own way

She also dismissed suggestions the strict social-distancing measures were tools of political repression meant to prevent people from gathering, saying they were in place to protect the community.

"So to defy and incite others to defy those restrictions under these circumstances is serious," Woodcock said. "The defendants wrongly and arrogantly believed their right to commemorate was more important than a serious health risk."

The Judge said instead of gathering in football pitches, the organisers should have held an interactive online vigil.

Lai was handed a 13-month sentence, which will run concurrently with a 20-month sentence he is currently serving for three other unauthorised assemblies.

Lai (left) at the unauthorised assembly

Barrister Chow Hang-tung, formerly a vice-chairwoman of the alliance, was jailed for a year after she was found guilty of incitement and participation, while activist Gwyneth Ho Kwai-lam received six months after being convicted of the latter charge in the same trial.

Lee Cheuk-yan, the alliance's ex-chairman, who is already serving a 20-month sentence for unauthorised assemblies, was handed a 14-month sentence to be served concurrently.

Other committee members of the alliance -- Richard Tsoi Yiu-cheong, Leung Yiu-chung, and Simon Leung Kam-wai were jailed for between nine and 12 months for incitement and participation.

Ex-chairman of the Democratic Party and former lawmaker Wu Chi-wai, who is serving a 10-month sentence over another unauthorised assembly and is also being remanded on a national security law case, saw his prison term extended by four months and two weeks for participation.

The seven were the last group of a total of 24 opposition activists and former politicians arraigned over the annual commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown that was banned after 30 years, citing pandemic social-distancing measures.

Chow was jailed for 12 months today

During his mitigation, Lai's defense counsel, Robert Pang Yiu-hung SC read out his client's handwritten letter. It said in whole:

"I did not join the June 4th vigil in Victoria Park. I lit a candle light in front of reporters to remind the world to remember and commemorate those young men and women, who 31 years ago in Tiananmen Square, put truth, just and goodness above their lives and died for them.

If commemorate those who died because of injustice is a crime, then inflict on me that crime and let me stuffer the punishment of the crime, so I may share the burden and glory of those young men and women who shed their blood on June 4th to proclaim truth, justice and goodness.

Lord, remember those who shed their blood, but do not remember their cruelty. Remember the fruits of those young men and women have borne, because of what they did. And grant, Lord, that the fruits of these young men and women have borne may be their redemption. May the power of love of the meek prevail over the power of destruction of the strong."

Lai's handwritten statement

Meanwhile Chow, who had discharged her defence team, read out her own statement for the record.

"Let us not delude ourselves that this is all about Covid-19," Chow said from the dock. "While the court sees fit to take judicial notice of the situation of a health crisis, it acts as if the parallel political crisis does not exist... It refuses to see the wider context under which this case happened, in the name of focusing only on relevant and admissible evidence.

"In closing its eyes to the obvious, the court risks making itself irrelevant to the ailments of our times," she continued. "In purporting to maintain political neutrality, the court is in effect affirming the unequal power wielded by the government in instituting political charges against its opponents, emboldening the authorities to take ever more restrictive action that squeezes out the rights of the citizens.

"The sentence on me, however legally sound, will be seen by Hongkongers and the world as a sentence on every Hongkonger in Victoria Park on June 4, 2020."