The Hong Kong government has said it will study how to “improve” national security legislation after the city’s top court quashed the convictions of three Tiananmen vigil activists.
Tang Ngok-kwan, formerly of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, outside the Court of Final Appeal on March 6, 2025. Photo: Kelly Ho/HKFP.
The Court of Final Appeal (CFA) on Thursday ruled in favour of Chow Hang-tung, Tang Ngok-kwan, and Tsui Hon-kwong – all from the now-disbanded Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which organised three decades of vigils commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown before the event was banned in 2020.
In an e-mailed reply to HKFP on Friday, the government said it has taken note of the apex court’s decision and will study its judgment.
It also said that it “will… examine how the relevant legal system and enforcement mechanisms can be improved in order to be more effective in preventing, suppressing and punishing acts endangering national security.”
The trio were convicted and sentenced to four and a half months in jail in 2023 for failing to comply with a police demand for data under the Beijing-imposed national security law, after authorities alleged that the alliance was a “foreign agent.” They denied the allegation.
Chow Hang-tung, former leader of the group that organised Hong Kong’s annual Tiananmen vigils, was escorted to Court of Final Appeal on June 8, 2023. File photo: Lea Mok/HKFP.
The CFA judges unanimously ruled that in redacting key facts from their evidence, the prosecution had “deprived the appellants of a fair trial so that their convictions involved a miscarriage of justice and would in any event not have been permitted to stand.”
The five-judge panel also dismissed the prosecution’s argument that it did not have to prove that the alliance was a foreign agent in court.
“The courts below fell into error in holding that it was sufficient merely for the [police commissioner] to assert that he had reasonable grounds to believe that HKA [Hong Kong Alliance] was a foreign agent,” the ruling said.
