Autor: global-affair

Responding to the resumption of the trial of activists who organized Tiananmen vigils in Hong Kong, Amnesty International Hong Kong’s spokesperson Fernando Cheung said:

“As closing arguments begin in this trial, the Hong Kong authorities must confront the basic injustice at its heart: commemorating victims of human rights abuses is compassionate, not criminal. Holding people criminally responsible for peaceful commemoration compounds the injustice suffered by the victims of the Tiananmen crackdown.

“Throughout these trial proceedings, Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan have shown remarkable courage and dignity in the face of prosecution. They did nothing but  legitimately exercise their human rights in their Tiananmen commemorations.”

Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director Sarah Brooks added:

“The prosecution’s case relies on vague, overly broad and arbitrary definitions of ‘subversion’. The charges against Chow and Lee should be dropped, and the authorities must ensure that people in Hong Kong can freely remember the events of 4 June 1989 without fear of retaliation.

“Chow and Lee are prisoners of conscience, incarcerated simply for exercising their human rights, and they must be immediately and unconditionally released.”

Background

The prosecution and defence are scheduled to deliver their closing statements in the trial of Hong Kong’s Tiananmen activists from 18 May 2026.

Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan were among the members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (Hong Kong Alliance) charged with “inciting subversion of state power” under the Beijing-imposed National Security Law in September 2021.

They have been held in pre-trial detention ever since, having been repeatedly denied bail, and face up to 10 years’ imprisonment if convicted. Both have been designated prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International.

Authorities said the annual Tiananmen vigil the Hong Kong Alliance had organized since 1990 was evidence of the group “endangering national security”.

Amnesty International has repeatedly raised concerns that Hong Kong’s National Security Law, enacted in June 2020, is being used to target civil society groups, journalists, political activists and academics for actions that are fully protected under international human rights law.

The Tiananmen vigils commemorated the events of 4 June 1989, when Chinese troops opened fire on students and workers who had been peacefully protesting for political reforms in and around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Hundreds – possibly thousands – of people were killed. Tens of thousands more were arrested across China in the suppression that followed.

In the 37 years since the crackdown, all discussion of the incident has been heavily censored in China, and authorities have effectively erased it from their version of history.

While commemorating the Tiananmen crackdown was forbidden in mainland China, in Hong Kong crowds reaching hundreds of thousands of people would gather annually in centrally located Victoria Park to peacefully remember those killed. The vigil participants called on the Chinese authorities to reveal the truth about what happened and accept accountability for the atrocity; local government as a practice did not interfere or object.

The last major vigil organized by the Hong Kong Alliance was held in 2019. The Hong Kong vigil was banned in 2020 and 2021, ostensibly on Covid-19 grounds. Since then, the National Security Law has effectively criminalized peaceful protest in the city – including Tiananmen commemorations.

The post Hong Kong: Activists’ unjust trial for peaceful Tiananmen commemoration resumes appeared first on Amnesty International.

We don’t own this land. We belong to the land. We are a part of the water, the earth, the air – we are a part of everything. The land and the Wet’suwet’en are very spiritual. My mom once said that the moment you accept a Wet’suwet’en Chief’s name, you are no longer your own person. From that day on, you only act in the best interest of your people… and everything that has to do with living on the land and being a part of the land.

In the 1950s, our lands were put onto reserves and we were given English names and turned into “legal Indians” – they made it sound like they were giving us something, but they were actually taking everything away. Before, we had hundreds of thousands of caribou (reindeers) on our territory, but the government and industry that followed drove them out. There are hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of resources underground on our territory and they want it.

Defending our land shouldn’t be a crime

For frontline Indigenous People like the Wet’suwet’en, the cost of fossil fuels is not theoretical. For years I’ve watched the Canadian government and fossil fuel companies carve their way through Wet’suwet’en territory, not just with machinery to build a liquified natural gas pipeline, but with a legal system that refuses to recognize our Indigenous law, authority, and rights.

When I first got convicted and faced house arrest for defending the Yin’tah (Wet’suwet’en land) from the pipeline construction, I went into a depression for three months because the court ruled that I couldn’t be out on the territory, doing what I was meant to do – protect the land and its wildlife. All the corporations see is an empty space, they don’t understand the land.

The (real) cost of fossil fuels

The Wet’suwet’en people have known for decades that the land is being pushed past its limits. Replanting a clear-cut forest doesn’t restore what was taken in the process of setting up the Coastal GasLink pipeline that runs through our land. It takes 60 to 70 years for new trees to mature, and even then, the ecosystems never fully return. Micro-habitats disappear. If our 22,000 square kilometers of territory were fully recognized as Wet’suwet’en land, we would decide what is extracted and what is protected and they would lose control.

The impacts of the Coastal GasLink pipeline don’t end at the construction site. Compressor stations, new pipeline infrastructure that the company wants to build on our land, will bring continuous low frequency noise and light pollution that floods what should be dark wilderness. Animals are deeply sensitive to sound and light. These are long-term harms that no environmental assessment meaningfully accounts for.

A system designed to enable extraction

During my conviction, a judge told me that Wet’suwet’en law and colonial law cannot coexist. It means the courts, which are supposed to be neutral, have already decided which laws matter and which don’t. Think about what it means for a judge to say this: it means no Indigenous person defending their land can ever expect a fair trial. It says that the laws of the people whose rights have never been extinguished will be dismissed outright.

This is not justice. It is the continuation of a system designed to enable extraction, not accountability.

In 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Delgamuukw affirmed  the Wet’suwet’en’s hereditary governance structure and that any major project crossing our territory must receive consent from our Hereditary Chiefs. That ruling should have guided every decision about the Coastal GasLink pipeline and LNG Canada’s operations. Instead, today the government acts as if the ruling doesn’t exist.

When we raised the Delgamuukw precedent in court, the judge dismissed it as irrelevant to the injunction and instead criminalized us for defending our unceded territory. But this legal fight runs deeper than one arrest.

This is not justice.
It is the continuation of a system designed to enable extraction, not accountability.

Chief Dsta’hyl, a Wing Chief of the Likhts’amisyu Clan of the Wet’suwet’en Nation

Bulldozing our rights is not climate leadership

We are asking the courts to enforce the basic principle of good governance – something Canada routinely preaches but rarely practices when fossil fuel profits are involved. It is a political choice driven by industry pressure and the desire to access our land without our consent.

Canada cannot call itself a climate leader or a human rights defender while bulldozing Indigenous law, silencing Indigenous sovereignty, and fast-tracking fossil fuel expansion.

The land is suffering. Our people are suffering. And unless this system changes, it won’t be the corporations paying the price. It will continue to be us.

Every contribution helps to resist

Since 2019, we have been fighting a climate case against the federal government. We’ve had it stayed three times and we keep pushing to move it forward.

We have been taking the lead in resistance for many years, against colonization, against abuse of powers that governments have over Indigenous Peoples worldwide. We have lawyers working on it full time and organizations providing support.

Amnesty International has brought so much awareness to our situation; there are not enough thank yous that we can say for all of the work it has done. I used to listen to programs on CBC where people came on to talk from Amnesty and I used to listen to it all the time. Other organizations have also helped Indigenous People – different foundations making contributions to help us with our plans to reclaim our land. We need this kind of help to continue; every contribution helps to resist the colonization.

Fossil fuels are a dying industry and have to stop. The world used to use whale oil and it wasn’t until fossil fuels came along that the slaughter of whales stopped. When General Motors first came out with the electric car, the big oil industry lobbied to get rid of it. We really only need to keep trying to move forward with climate action and stay optimistic.

Every climate movement, whether through the new draft UN Climate Change resolution on the ICJ Advisory Opinion tabled by the Pacific islands or whether it’s Amnesty or the lawyers helping us, it all makes a huge difference, especially on the international front. It is our land, our law, our wildlife, our health, our governance, and our future being sacrificed so corporations can profit and governments can avoid confronting the climate crisis.

Sometimes it may feel futile but we all have to do our part for all humanity.

Every climate movement, whether through the new draft UN Climate Change resolution on the ICJ Advisory Opinion tabled by the Pacific islands or whether it’s Amnesty or the lawyers helping us… it all makes a huge difference.

Chief Dsta’hyl

The post “For frontline Indigenous Peoples, the cost of fossil fuels is not theoretical” – Chief Dsta’hyl on land, climate change and our collective future. appeared first on Amnesty International.