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Two civil rights advocates were convicted Friday of national security crimes by a special court in Hong Kong, and now face up to a decade in prison. The convictions come as local clergy warn of increased harassment of Church officials in the territory.

Chow Hang-tung and Lee Cheuk-yan were convicted of incitement to subversion for their roles in organizing a prayer vigil in 2021 to mark the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

The activists have been in prison since September of 2021 and, along with a co-defendant who pled guilty in January, are the latest individuals to be convicted under the sweeping National Security Law brought into force in Hong Kong in 2019 by the mainland government.

The convictions highlight the extent to which the Special Administrative Region is taking an increasingly hard line on the exercise of once-tolerated basic civil liberties, with clerics in the region reporting heightened tensions and harassment of Church officials, mirroring similar circumstances on the mainland.

Chow and Lee were key leaders of the now defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, founded in the

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