The Brave Witness of Chow Hang-tung
Crowds waited outside a Hong Kong courthouse on Friday for a verdict for Chow Hang-tung that was preordained at her arrest five years earlier: guilty of inciting subversion of state power.
The supposedly criminal act: Her pro-democracy Hong Kong Alliance held annual memorial services for those killed by their own government in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing.
Only the most naive could believe that Hong Kong has a fair legal system, in which a pro-democracy advocate could have a chance of acquittal. Ms. Chow didn’t benefit from a jury trial—that constitutional guarantee has been jettisoned in favor of handpicked judges. The arrangement has helped the government secure a near-perfect record of convictions in national security cases.
The trial of Ms. Chow and other leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance produced some unexpected fireworks. The 41-year-old dissident put Hong Kong’s legal system and the Chinese Communist Party on the spot as few others have.
Representing herself, Ms. Chow agreed with prosecutors that she had called for the end of one-party communist rule. But she challenged them to prove it was illegal. “The key phrase in this case, ‘ending one-party dictatorship,’ is by nature a call for the rule of law. It seeks to end a state in which the party stands above the law and to restore our inherent rights, including that of democracy,” she told the court. “This is not a trial of the Hong Kong Alliance or the defendants, this is a trial of Hong Kong’s justice system.”
