Hong Kong’s top court has quashed the convictions of three core members of a now-disbanded alliance behind the city’s annual Tiananmen Square vigil who were sentenced to jail for failing to help with a police investigation.
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The Court of Final Appeal on Thursday overturned the lower courts’ decisions by ruling that the trio from the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China were deprived of a fair trial.
Former vice-chairwoman Chow Hang-tung and ex-standing committee members Tsui Hon-kwong and Tang Ngok-kwan from the now-dissolved group were previously convicted by a lower court for refusing to provide police with details about the alliance’s members, donors, financial reports and activities in September 2021.
The trio, who had been sentenced to 4½ months’ jail in 2023, subsequently launched the first legal challenge over the implementation rules of the Beijing-imposed national security law, which empowered the police chief to request a range of information from a suspected foreign agent or one with links to Taiwan.
They argued that the prosecution had failed to prove the alliance was “in fact” a foreign agent.
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Under the particular rule that the three were charged under, the police chief can directly issue a notice to the suspected foreign agent to hand out relevant information based on “reasonable belief”, without the need to obtain a disclosure order from the court.