Activist Tonyee Chow sees 15-month jail term over calls to banned vigil upheld

The appeal against a 15-month jail term over calls to take part in a banned June 4 vigil by the organizer’s vice-chair Tonyee Chow Hang-tung was rejected by the High Court on Wednesday. 

The 39-year-old vice-chair of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China was earlier convicted of illegally inciting others to knowingly participate in an unauthorized assembly between May 29 and June 4, 2021. 

She then appealed against both her conviction and sentence and won, but the Department of Justice later took the lawsuit to the Court of Final Appeal. The city’s top court then restored Chow’s conviction and ordered a retrial for her appeal against the sentence. 

In a judgment released on Wednesday, judge Judianna Barnes said she completely agreed with the department’s case and cited the previous Court of Final Appeal ruling that the police commissioner’s ban on the June 4 vigil over pandemic concerns was “plainly a proportionate and legitimate measure”. 

Barnes added that Chow couldn’t use the mild development of Covid at the time as a reason to ask the court to grant her leave to appeal, and Chow also couldn’t use freedom of speech as grounds for her agrument. 

Barnes also agreed with the original magistrate starting Chow’s sentence at 12 months and noted that it was not inappropriate of the court to extend her term by another three months, given Chow disregarded the law and committed offenses relevant to her bail. 

The original 15-month term, with 10 months to be served consecutively from a separate case, was therefore upheld.