More pain for vigil alliance

The top three leaders of an alliance that organized the annual June 4 vigil - chairman Lee Cheuk-yan and vice chairpersons Tonyee Chow Hang-tung and Albert Ho Chun-yan - were last night charged with inciting subversion under the national security law.

The three will appear in West Kowloon Magistracy today. The Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China also faces the same charge.

Lee and Ho, both former lawmakers, are now in jail on other charges linked to illegal assemblies.

Chow faced an additional charge together with four other alliance standing committee members - Leung Kam-wai, Tsui Hon-kwong, Tang Ngok-kwan and Chan To-wai - of failing to provide information to the national security police.

Tsui was arrested yesterday as police searched the shuttered June 4th Museum in Mong Kok.

Chow, Leung, Tang and Chan were arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of violating the national security law after the group refused to provide information - such as its activities, expenditures and contacts - to police, who had accused the alliance of being a foreign agent.

Tsui had applied for a judicial review to the High Court against the police request for information.

Sources said his 44-year-old domestic helper was arrested for obstructing police from executing their duty as she blocked them from opening the door of Tsui's residence when they attempted to arrest him on Wednesday.

Police yesterday searched the June 4th Museum as well as an industrial building in Kwai Chung, where the alliance's warehouse is reportedly located.

More than 10 boxes of evidence, display boards printed with June 4 vigil images and cardboard cutouts of political figures were among dozens of items that were taken away from the museum, which was operated by the alliance.

Leung was escorted by police to the museum to help with the investigation.

Richard Tsoi Yiu-cheong, a former standing committee member, found that the museum's gate had been installed with a new lock and a security camera was removed after the police search.

A paper stuck on the gate reads "contact Mong Kok police station" and had a phone number.

The museum, closed to the public since June 2, was set up by the alliance to tell the history of the 1989 democracy movement in China.

Britain's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted their opposition to the arrests.

But the office of the Commissioner of the Chinese Foreign Ministry in the HKSAR slammed politicians from Britain and America, saying they "recklessly ignored the facts" and "confound black and white" for criticizing police arrests.

maisy.mok@singtaonewscorp.com