For decades, Hong Kong mourned when the mainland could not. Its huge annual Tiananmen vigil kept alive the memory of the 1989 pro-reform protests in Beijing, and of the massacre that suppressed them. Along with Macau, it was the only place in China where the anniversary could be publicly marked and the truth preserved.

But the crackdown on the 2019 uprising in Hong Kong has crushed the freedoms that the region once enjoyed. That year’s vigil was the last. On Friday, two leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance, which organised the commemoration, were convicted of incitement to subversion under the draconian national security law. Lee Cheuk-yan, 69, and Chow Hang-tung, 41, face up to 10 years in jail.

A third defendant, the 74-year-old former legislator Albert Ho, pleaded guilty in January. All three have been imprisoned since their arrests in 2021. The court ruled........

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