Hong Kong Correctional Services removed a public letter addressed to Hong Kong Pro-democracy activist Tonyee Chow Hang-tung from her fiancé. Ms. Chow has been imprisoned under Beijing-imposed Hong Kong National Security Law.
Ms. Chow, 39, a human-rights lawyer, was the vice-chairperson of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China, a now-disbanded pro-democracy group. Despite being jailed, she has continued to defy the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) campaign to subjugate the city.
Ms. Chow has already finished two sentences for unauthorized assembly in relation to the banned Tiananmen Vigils in 2020 and 2021. She is now charged with“incitement to subversion,” which carries a sentence of up to 10 years imprisonment under the national security law. She has been detained since September 2021 at a maximum security women’s prison.
In an article published in the Chinese-language newspaper Ming Pao on Jan. 21, Ms. Chow’s fiancé Wu Yangwei, who goes by his pen name Ye Du, revealed that one of Ms. Chow’s family members had recently passed away, and she was devastated when she learned of the news in prison.
Mr. Wu, who could not go to Hong Kong for the funeral due to the CCP’s border restriction, was similarly distressed.
“I can’t be there to wipe away all your tears and pain in your sorrow,” reads his letter.
“I can’t even cross the shallow waters of the Shenzhen River to hasten for the funeral.
“My heart is suffering with you.”
According to Mr. Wu’s Jan. 27 post on social media platform X, his letter in the newspaper was cut out by prison authorities. It can not be seen by Ms. Chow, echoing the words in the article: “A lover’s love letter can be read by the whole world except one.”
As mentioned in the article, Mr. Wu met Ms. Chow’s parents for the first time five years ago, when he came to Hong Kong on Chinese New Year. That is also the last time he was with Ms. Chow.
“I am sure that the senior parent was proud of you at the moment he/she left,” he wrote, referring to the passing of Ms. Chow’s family member.
His letter quoted C.S. Lewis’s book “A Grief Observed” to express his longing and concluded with the lament that “In H.C. Anderson’s world, the new clothes are invisible to all but one person. In the real world, a lover’s love letter can be read by all but one person.”
In December 2023, a Hong Kong court rejected a fresh bail application for Ms. Chow, whose subversion trial is expected to open in late 2024.
In making the latest in a series of so far unsuccessful bail applications, Ms. Chow’s lawyer, Cheung Yiu-leung, noted Ms. Chow had already served more than two years in detention after being arrested on suspicion of “incitement for subversion” over her ties to a group that organized an annual June 4 vigil.
High Court judge Andrew Chan said he couldn’t grant bail because Ms. Chow might carry out acts that endanger national security.
The Chinese edition of The Epoch Times has reached out to Hong Kong Correctional Services but has not received a reply by press time.
