Hong Kong court jails 3 members of Tiananmen vigil group

Three former members of a Hong Kong group that organised annual vigils to mark China’s 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, were jailed on Saturday for four and a half months for not complying with a national security police request for information.
Chow Hang-tung, 38, a prominent Hong Kong pro-democracy activist and former vice-chairperson of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, was among those convicted by a magistrate’s court.
The two others were Tang Ngok-kwan and Tsui Hon-kwong.
The magistrate, Peter Law, said “national security is cardinally important to public interests and the whole nation,” while imposing a custodial sentence that fell short of the six months maximum jail term for the charge.
The now-disbanded Alliance was the main organiser of Hong Kong’s June 4 candlelight vigil for victims of China’s Tiananmen Square crackdown. Every year it drew tens of thousands of people in the largest public commemoration of its kind on Chinese soil.