Mainland Chinese student admits to sedition in Hong Kong over plan to hang banner criticising seizure of Tiananmen Square crackdown statue
- National security police seized statue marking 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in May amid ongoing investigation into disbanded group behind candlelight vigil
- Zeng Yuxuan pleads guilty to sedition after arranging for nine-meter-tall lithograph to be publicly displayed in call for Pillar of Shame sculpture to be returned to artist
A student from mainland China has admitted breaching Hong Kong’s colonial-era sedition law by planning to display a giant banner criticising police’s seizure of a sculpture remembering the victims of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.
Zeng Yuxuan, also known as Annika Tsang, pleaded guilty on Monday to attempting or preparing to commit a seditious act, after she arranged for the nine-meter-tall (29-foot-tall) lithograph to be unfurled in a crowded district with the help of a former student leader of the 1989 democratic movement.
Hong Kong security chief slams ‘art’ threats, doesn’t confirm if sculptor wanted
The giant banner, emblazoned with an image of the eight-metre statue, said the 1989 crackdown was a “massacre” and that “the old cannot kill the young forever”.
Officers arrested Zeng on June 1 this year after she collected a parcel containing two such banners, which were shipped from the US.
The student admitted under caution she had received the lithographs from Zhou Fengsou, a Tiananmen activist in exile after the 1989 crackdown.
A search of Zeng’s iPhone revealed she had notified two media outlets about her plan to display one of the banners on a footbridge in Causeway Bay at 6.40pm on June 4.
She had also prepared a pamphlet mocking the park being used as a venue for celebrating Hong Kong’s return to Chinese rule while those mourning the Tiananmen Square victims went to jail.
Hong Kong security chief says seizing of sculpture unrelated to June 4 anniversary
Notes retrieved from the phone also suggested Zeng would disguise herself as an ordinary mainland tourist who could not understand Cantonese in case she was confronted by police, the court heard.
Prosecutor Elisa Cheng Wing-yu said Zeng’s act was capable of instigating hatred, contempt and disaffection towards the central government.
She urged the court to take into account the nature of the international campaign and help offered by an overseas “suspect” – a reference to Zhou – when deciding on the appropriate penalty.
Defence lawyer Chan Yik-kan argued the banner was unlikely to galvanise people into taking radical action, adding the court should be wary of deterring free speech by imposing a hefty sentence.
Principal Magistrate Peter Law Tak-chuen, who was approved by city leader John Lee Ka-chiu to hear national security cases, adjourned sentencing until Tuesday.
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Carnival replaces vigil in Hong Kong's Victoria Park on Tiananmen crackdown anniversary
Zeng initially faced a second count of sedition over an alleged public display of mourning for a man behind a 2021 knife attack on a police officer, but the prosecution agreed to drop that charge on condition she admit liability over the giant banner.
Galschiøt, reportedly wanted by local police, previously said the sculpture’s seizure marked “China’s kidnapping of one of Hong Kong’s symbols of freedom”.
“The banners will be used on June 4th for commemorations of the massacre in Beijing in 1989. They show China that the country cannot erase its own history,” a statement on his website said.
The sculpture had stood in the University of Hong Kong’s Pok Fu Lam campus since 1997 and regularly featured in the city’s Tiananmen Square vigils.
The candlelight vigil was last officially held in Victoria Park in 2019. In 2020 and 2021, police banned it, citing public health concerns amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The alliance disbanded in September 2021 in light of the national security law.
