(Bloomberg) -- Organizers of an annual vigil in Hong Kong to mark the Tiananmen Square crackdown are to appear in court for a bail hearing after they were charged with violating the national security law imposed by Beijing.

The Hong Kong police force’s National Security Department charged seven members of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, the government said in a statement late Thursday.

They are due to appear in West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts Friday morning, according to the statement. Representatives from the British, Swedish and German consulates were in the courtroom before the hearing started.

The alliance, chairman Lee Cheuk-yan, vice chairman Albert Ho and vice chairwoman Chow Hang Tung face charges of “inciting subversion of state power,” the organization said on its Facebook page. Other members are accused of not providing information requested by the national security officials.

Dozen Hong Kong Activists Plead Guilty Over 2020 Tiananmen Vigil

Authorities in Hong Kong have been taking aim at people and institutions linked to the vigil, which drew tens of thousands of people annually. Ho, a former Democratic Party leader who sought the city’s top office in 2012, was among seven defendants who pleaded guilty in a separate court Thursday to taking part in the event last year after it was banned and inciting others to do so.

Government officials blamed the ban on the need to prevent coronavirus outbreaks, but democracy advocates accused them of using the pandemic to curb freedoms guaranteed to the former British colony before its 1997 return to Chinese rule.

Also Thursday, the city’s national security police searched a museum dedicated to the events of June 4, the South China Morning Post newspaper reported earlier, citing a police source it didn’t identify.

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