After having adopted a number of Chinese dissidents as our group’s Prisoners of Conscience over many years, this year - 2025 - we have taken up the case of Hong Kong human rights lawyer and activist Chow Hang-tung. 

Chow was arrested in June 2021 and is now serving prison sentences in Hong Kong's Tai-Lam Centre for Women on charges related to candlelight vigils she helped organise to remember the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in June 2020 and June 2021.  As Vice-Chair of the Hong Kong Alliance, she herself had gone to Hong Kong's Victoria Park to light a commemorative candle in June 2020 and also encouraged others to remember the event by lighting candles in both June 2020 and June 2021, although the authorities had refused to authorise such commemorations.

Despite being acquitted in December 2022 of the charge and 15-month prison term in respect of the banned 2021 vigil, the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal re-instated the conviction following the prosecution’s appeal of the acquittal.  She was already serving a 12-month prison sentence for the June 2020 commemoration. 

She has also been sentenced to 4½ months under the National Security laws for failing to give the national security police information about the Hong Kong Alliance membership and other data to assist with an investigation and is awaiting a ruling on this by the Court of Final Appeal. 

She further faces a potential 10-year jail sentence if convicted of a separate charge of “inciting subversion of state power”.  

She reportedly has repeatedly been denied bail and has several times been held in solitary confinement. 

Amnesty International is seeking her immediate and unconditional release as she is being detained solely for peacefully exercising her right to freedom of expression.