Hong Kong activist and business tycoon Jimmy Lai will serve 13 months' in prison for urging participation in last year's banned Tiananmen vigil, amid a crackdown by Chinese authorities that has rolled back the semi-autonomous city's civil liberties.
The District Court convicted seven others on similar charges on Monday and handed out sentences of up to 14 months.
Hong Kong's government banned the candlelight vigil for the past two years on pandemic control grounds, although it is widely believed the ban is intended to be permanent as authorities look to squelch the city's pro-democracy movement.
Mr Lai, the founder of the now-closed pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily, has already been jailed for taking part in pro-democracy protests for which he will serve a total of 20 months.
In the latest case, he was convicted on Thursday of inciting others to take part in the unauthorised assembly to memorialise those killed in the army's bloody crackdown on student-led pro-democracy protests that centred on Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Two other defendants convicted along with Mr Lai, lawyer Chow Hang-tung and former reporter Gwyneth Ho, were sentenced to 12 and six months respectively for participating in the vigil.
Ms Chow was also sentenced for inciting others to join.
The trio had previously pleaded not guilty to the charges.
News outlet Hong Kong Free Press reported that Mr Lai's lawyer read out a letter from the businessman in court.
Mr Lai, 73, is currently serving a separate 14-month jail term for other convictions earlier this year also related to unauthorised rallies in 2019, when hundreds of thousands repeatedly took to the streets in the biggest challenge to Beijing since the British handed over the city to Chinese control in 1997 under a "one country, two systems" framework.
Under that arrangement, Beijing promised that the territory could retain its freedoms not found on the mainland for 50 years, but has largely reneged on that pledge by severely curtailing free speech and barring pro-democracy politicians from office.
China last year passed a broadly defined national security law which has been viewed as codifying Beijing's repressive tactics, effectively ending Western-style civil liberties in Hong Kong.
AP/ABC
