Jailed Hong Kong mogul Jimmy Lai said he was proud to be punished as a court handed out fresh jail sentences on Monday to eight prominent democracy activists for attending a banned Tiananmen vigil.
Mr Lai, the 74-year-old owner of the now-shuttered pro-democracy Apple Daily newspaper, was found guilty of unlawful assembly charges alongside former journalist Gwyneth Ho and prominent rights lawyer Chow Hang-tung last week.
He was among a group of eight - most of them already behind bars for protest-related offences - who were given terms ranging from four to 14 months on Monday afternoon.
Their case wraps up a lengthy prosecution of about two dozen campaigners over a banned vigil last year as Hong Kong authorities stamp out commemorations for democracy protesters killed by Chinese troops in the 1989 crackdown.
The activists were among thousands who defied a police ban to gather in Hong Kong's Victoria Park on 4 June 2020.
Some gave speeches and interviews with reporters calling on Hong Kongers to light candles wherever they happened to be.
Others such as Mr Lai only turned up at the event and lit a candle - an action judge Amanda Woodcock ruled as "inciting" people to join an unlawful assembly because of his fame and notoriety.
During mitigation on Monday, Mr Lai's lawyer Robert Pang read out a hand-written letter his client had penned from prison which his team later released to reporters.
"If commemorating those who died because of injustice is a crime, then inflict on me that crime and let me suffer the punishment of this crime, so I may share the burden and glory of those young men and women who shed their blood on June 4," Mr Lai wrote.
"Remember those who shed the blood but do not remember the cruelty... may the power of love prevail over the power of destruction."
Ms Chow, in her mitigation said, "If those in power had wished to kill the movement with prosecution and imprisonment, they shall be sorely disappointed. Indeed what they have done is breathe new life into the movement, rallying a new generation to this long struggle for truth, justice and democracy."
Five others who had pleaded guilty, including Lee Cheuk-yan, leader of the now-disbanded vigil organiser Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, were also sentenced.
"If there was a provocateur, it is the regime that fired at its own people," an emotional Mr Lee, who received the highest sentence of 14 months, told the court on November 17.
"If I must go to jail to affirm my will, then so be it."
All sentences will be served concurrently with any other sentences the defendants are already facing in other cases.
Sixteen other activists are already serving sentences of 4-10 months related to the 2020 vigil. Two democracy campaigners facing similar charges over the vigil, Nathan Law and Sunny Cheung, have fled Hong Kong.
After mass pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong in 2019, the global financial hub has taken a swift authoritarian turn with Beijing's imposition of a sweeping national security law last year impacting many aspects of life in the city.
China has never provided a full account of the 1989 crackdown on protest there that centered on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
The death toll given by officials days later was about 300, most of them soldiers, but rights groups and witnesses say thousands of protesters may have been killed.
