Hong Kong student charged with unlawful assembly over shopping mall protest 4 years ago

Hong Kong Free Press

A 20-year-old man has been charged with unlawful assembly over his suspected involvement in a protest that took place in a Hong Kong shopping mall four years ago.

Issac Lee, a student, appeared at Kwun Tong Magistrates’ Courts on Tuesday morning. He was remanded in custody until next Tuesday, when his case will next be mentioned in court.

Lee is suspected of taking part in an unlawful assembly in Kwun Tong’s apm shopping mall on June 30, 2020, along with Arthur Chiang, Truvian Wong, Cheung Chung-lun and others.

Around 100 people gathered in the mall that day for a “sing with you” demonstration, a unique form of protest popularised during the 2019 unrest that saw people gather in shopping centres or other venues to sing together as a show of solidarity. The Beijing-imposed national security law came into effect at 11 pm that evening.

Chiang, Wong and Cheung in 2022 pleaded guilty to participating in an unlawful assembly and each served an eight-week jail term.

yellow warning flag apm mall protest july 6 2020 — Police raised a yellow warning flag at the apm mall during a protest on July 6 2020. File photo: Joshua Kwan/United Social Press.

According to The Witness, the police sought to arrest Chiang again in April 2022, while he was studying in the UK. Chiang’s family informed him about the police order and he was arrested at Hong Kong International Airport after he returned to the city in June 2022.

Protests erupted in June 2019 over a since-axed extradition bill. They escalated into sometimes violent displays of dissent against police behaviour, amid calls for democracy and anger over Beijing’s encroachment. Demonstrators demanded an independent probe into police conduct, amnesty for those arrested and a halt to the characterisation of protests as “riots.”

Charges years after arrests

Separately, the police rearrested five people in connection with rioting at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University almost five years ago, at the height of the protests in 2019.

For several days that November, protesters occupied the university during a lengthy police siege in one of the most dramatic moments of the protests, as clashes turned the campus and the surrounding neighbourhood into a battleground.