Hong Kong Activist Tonyee Chow Awarded Franco-German Prize for Human Rights

Tonyee Chow Hang-tung, vice chairperson of the HK Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, was awarded the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law 2023. File photo taken on May 20, 2021. Sung Pi-lung/The Epoch Times

Tonyee Chow Hang-tung, former vice-chairwoman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China who is jailed for “incitement to subversion,” was awarded the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law 2023, the only recipient in Asia.

The International Human Rights Day (Dec. 10) this year marks the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly. The 12 prize winners include heads of non-governmental organizations, lawyers, journalists, and activists “working to defend the inalienable rights of each and every human being,” according to a press release from the German Federal Foreign Office.

“They stand up for those whose voices would often not be heard without them,” reads the statement. “They are committed to the cause of justice, political participation, and unbiased reporting in the media, often risking their own freedom, frequently even their lives, under the most difficult conditions.”

In 2021, Ms. Chow, along with Lee Cheuk-yan, former chairman of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, Albert Ho Chun-yan, the former vice-chairman of the Alliance, and the Alliance itself were charged with “incitement to subversion,” a crime under the National Security Law in Hong Kong.

In addition to Ms. Chow, prizewinners this year came from Syria, Venezuela, the Central African Republic, Iraq, Lebanon, Poland, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Cook Islands, and Ghana.

Past Chinese recipients include Beijing human rights lawyer Li Yuhan in 2020, Li Wenzu (wife of human rights lawyer Wang Quanzhang) in 2019, human rights lawyer Yu Wensheng (who supported the arrested civil rights lawyers in the 2015, 709 crackdown) in 2018, and Wang Qiaoling (wife of human rights lawyer Li Heping) in 2016.

Since 2016, France and Germany have jointly honoured individuals around the world on International Human Rights Day for their outstanding commitment to the promotion of human rights. The two governments recognize that the protection, preservation, and strengthening of human rights is a prerequisite for freedom, justice, and peace throughout the world.

On Dec. 13, the Hong Kong authorities expressed their strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the awarding to Chow by the French and German governments, as well as British Foreign Secretary David Cameron meeting Lai Shun Yan, the son of 76-year-old media mogul Jimmy Lai, who is facing up to life imprisonment for alleged “sedition” and “collusion with foreign forces.”

A spokesperson said that Hong Kong is China’s Hong Kong and that Hong Kong affairs are purely China’s internal affairs.

“We urge the parties concerned to face up to their own problems, stop playing geopolitical tricks, and cure their obsessive-compulsive disorder of interfering in Hong Kong’s affairs and China’s internal affairs before it is too late!” said the spokesperson.

“We honor 12 personalities with the Franco-German Prize for Human Rights and the Rule of Law for their commitment to human dignity and inalienable human rights,” the German Consulate General Hong Kong wrote in a Facebook post.