China/Hong Kong: Amnesty International recognizes three activists as prisoners of conscience

Amnesty International today designated three prominent human rights defenders from Hong Kong and mainland China as prisoners of conscience. Human rights lawyers Chow Hang-tung and Ding Jiaxi, along with the free media advocate Jimmy Lai, are all currently imprisoned solely because of their peaceful human rights activism. Amnesty International has called for their immediate release. “As the Chinese government touts progress on its measures to promote human rights, the stories of these three human rights defenders demonstrate a starkly different reality inside the country,” said Sarah Brooks, Amnesty International’s China Director. “Meeting with diplomats; discussing politics; complaining about unfair treatment in police custody; talking with friends over dinner: these are all things that can get you jailed in today’s China. “The ongoing detentions of Chow, Ding and Lai demonstrate the continuing failure of the authorities in China to uphold their international obligations, and their prosecution lays bare the cowardice of state officials who cannot accept criticism, whether from international experts or from their own citizens.” Jimmy Lai and Chow Hang-tung have both been targeted amidst a broader dismantling of human rights and civic space in Hong Kong since the introduction of a Beijing-imposed National Security Law (NSL) in 2020. Ding Jiaxi, as with many human rights defenders in mainland China, is the direct victim of the authorities’ overly broad and vague ‘national security-related’ laws that justify convictions in secret trials and lengthy jail sentences. Amnesty International considers a prisoner of conscience to be any person imprisoned solely because of their political, religious or other conscientiously held beliefs, their ethnic origin, sex, colour, language, national or social origin, socio-economic status, birth, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression , or other status, and who has not used violence or advocated violence or hatred in the circumstances leading to their detention. Jimmy Lai Nearly 200 police raidedLai’sApple Daily newspaper shortly after the NSL was enacted. He was arrested along with several newspaper executives, and eventually charged with “colluding with foreign forces” under the NSL, and with sedition. Apple Daily closed in June 2021 following another police raid and the freezing of its assets, in what Amnesty International called a “flagrant attack on press freedom”. Lai faces a maximum sentence of life imprisonment in his ongoing national security trial. Hong Kong courts have already convicted Lai on four separate cases involving “unauthorized assemblies”, for his engagement in peaceful protest – including attending a Tiananmen Square vigil. He has also been prosecuted for alleged “fraud”; as a result, Lai is already serving combined prison sentences which will see him spend nearly seven years unjustly behind bars. Lai, who will turn 77 in December, has reportedly been held in solitary confinement, and there are serious concerns about his health, especially following the cancellation of his appearance in court in early June 2024. Those concerns are exacerbated by the lengthy delays in his NSL trial; begun in December 2023. After a long adjournment, it is currently expected to continue in November 2024. Chow Hang-tung Chow was charged in 2020 for participating in a peaceful vigil commemorating protesters killed in the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown, and charged again in 2021 after she asked people on social media to light candles in memory of the victims. She was jailed for 22 months for daring to commemorate their lives. Chow also faces a potential 10-year prison sentence for “inciting subversion” under the NSL over her role as former leader of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, which organized the city’s annual Tiananmen candlelight vigil for 30 years.