Chow Hang-tung, the former vice chair of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, has urged the court to safeguard the “dignity and bottom line of the law”, warning judges not to become “accomplices” in what she described as a broader crackdown on free speech.
Representing herself in a national security trial, Chow said in her closing submissions that authorities were “reshaping” the city’s long-standing values by prosecuting activists who advocate for democracy in China. She argued that the government was seeking to use the law to compel people to abandon democratic aspirations and accept authoritarian rule, and to recast the telling of truth as incitement to hatred.
She said that calls for “power to the people” were being treated as subversion.
“No matter how powerful the Communist Party’s leadership may be, it cannot command our conscience,” she said.
Chow repeatedly urged the court to consider whether the law risked becoming “a tool for an authoritarian system to reshape social values” and to abandon democratic principles in order to safeguard one-party rule.
Defence: prosecution seeking to criminalise democratic advocacy
Chow argued that the prosecution had effectively sought to criminalise advocacy for democratic reform and opposition to one-party rule. She told the court that calls for “ending one-party dictatorship” should be understood as a constitutional demand for accountability, rather than an attempt to overthrow the state.
She said the case reflected what she described as official “paranoia” towards dissent, adding that ordinary citizens would not naturally be incited to unlawful acts simply by hearing political criticism.
If the court were to accept such an approach, she argued, it would risk undermining long-established political freedoms in Hong Kong.
“If the court cannot rigorously draw a line for what is the reasonable and natural effect [of political speech], it will easily become an accomplice in the authorities’ crime,” she said. “What is on trial is actually the law itself.”
Free speech, comparative law and limits of interpretation
Chow also cited a Canadian Supreme Court ruling on hate speech, and referred to historical examples of people being suppressed for asserting basic scientific facts, such as that “the Earth is round”.
She argued that society was now facing a renewed situation in which it was effectively unacceptable to describe authoritarian rule as authoritarian.
She warned that if the court adopted the prosecution’s overly broad or selective interpretation of the law, it could risk becoming complicit in abuses of power and in shielding the authorities from accountability over the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
South Korea’s Gwangju uprising cited as comparative example
A substantial part of Chow’s submissions drew on South Korea’s Gwangju Uprising Gwangju Uprising (May 18) and the subsequent prosecution of former president Chun Doo-hwan.
She said the 1980 crackdown, in which pro-democracy protests were violently suppressed, bore similarities to the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, in that both involved mass civilian movements met with military force, followed by continued authoritarian rule in the immediate aftermath.
Chow noted, however, that South Korea later underwent a democratic transition, and that those responsible for the crackdown were eventually brought to justice.
She referred to arguments made by Chun’s defence, which claimed that once power had been secured and the constitution amended, governance under the revised legal framework was lawful and could not be retrospectively challenged.
However, she said South Korea’s Supreme Court rejected this reasoning, reaffirming that constitutional legitimacy rests on enduring principles including popular sovereignty, liberal democracy, protection of fundamental rights, and the rule of law.
Under that framework, she argued, any seizure or retention of power through the subversion of democratic processes cannot be legitimised simply by later constitutional change.
Chow said the ruling underscored a broader principle: political authority does not equate to legal supremacy. She argued that in the Gwangju context, the true breach of constitutional order lay not with civilians protesting martial law, but with those who used military force to disable constitutional institutions and prevent their independent functioning.
She added that constitutional interpretation should not amount to “victor’s justice”, and should instead be grounded in enduring democratic principles rather than the interests of those in power at any given time.
Closing remarks
In her closing submissions, Chow Hang-tung said that in this case the standards of right and wrong had been turned on their head. She argued that telling the truth had been reframed as incitement to hatred, seeking justice as exploiting suffering, holding power to account as a constitutional violation, and calling for power to be returned to the people as subversion of the state.
She said the slogan “end one-party dictatorship” should be understood as a rule-of-law demand aimed at ending a system in which the party is placed above the law, and at securing basic human rights and democratic freedoms.
Chow told the court it now faced a fundamental choice over whether the law would function as a safeguard of rights or become an instrument for entrenching political power.
The court has reserved verdict, with a ruling expected in late July.