September 11, 2026
The prison terms made the headlines. The families’ response revealed something deeper: the effort to preserve memory and conviction even when the personal cost is measured in years.
Hong Kong sentenced former Hong Kong Alliance leaders Chow Hang-tung, Lee Cheuk-yan and Albert Ho after their convictions for inciting subversion under the national security law. Lee received seven years, Chow seven years and three months, and Ho five years and two months.
After the sentencing, Lee’s wife Elizabeth Tang said the punishment reached beyond the defendants because millions of Hong Kong people had attended or supported the city’s June 4 candlelight vigils. She said Lee would appeal.
Outside the courthouse, Chow’s mother, Medina Chow Lau Wah-chun, thanked supporters and urged them not to lose heart. She also pointed to an extraordinary irony: the prosecution had helped place the history of the 1989 crackdown and Hong Kong’s subsequent struggle over memory into the court record.
A response larger than three sentences
For survivors and participants of the 1989 democracy movement, these family responses carry a familiar meaning. The struggle for freedom has never been only a history of organizations or famous dissidents. It is also a history of people deciding that truth, memory and conscience are worth defending even when doing so threatens their own security.
Free China Movement expresses solidarity with Chow Hang-tung, Lee Cheuk-yan, Albert Ho and their families, and with the Hong Kong citizens and Chinese people of conscience who continue to preserve the memory of June 4.
The sentences tell us what the law imposed. The families’ response tells us what the law has failed to extinguish.
Read the deeper argument
Why do people continue to choose conscience when freedom itself is the price? Read FCM’s long-form editorial: When the Law Punishes Conscience: Why Justice Can Stand Above Unjust Law.
Sources
Sentencing details and family responses were reported by Reuters and the Associated Press on September 11, 2026.