Responding to the sentencing of activists who organized Tiananmen vigils in Hong Kong, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director Sarah Brooks said:
“During most of the 30 years that Hongkongers commemorated the Tiananmen crackdown with an annual candlelight vigil, it would have been unthinkable that the organizers of the event could be jailed for their peaceful activism. But today’s sentencing illustrates just how much Hong Kong has been transformed in the name of ‘national security’.
“This sentencing is a triple tragedy: for the activists being unjustly punished; the survivors and victims of the Tiananmen crackdown itself; and the generations of Hongkongers denied the space to discuss one of the most consequential events in modern Chinese history.
“The persecution of the Tiananmen activists exposes the profound fear of dissenting voices that defines Hong Kong’s ‘national security’ regime. But you do not strengthen national security by imprisoning people for peacefully remembering the dead”.
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