Hong Kong student jailed for 8 weeks over unlawful shopping mall demo in 2020
Hong Kong Free Press
A 20-year-old Hong Kong man has been jailed for eight weeks over his involvement in an unlawful demonstration at a shopping mall in June 2020.
Student Isaac Lee was put behind bars by Magistrate Edward Wong on Monday, after pleading guilty last month to taking part in an unlawful assembly in Kwun Tong’s apm mall on June 30, 2020, hours before the Beijing-imposed national security law came into force, local media reported.
On that day, around 100 people gathered in the shopping centre for a “sing with you” demonstration, a form of protest popularised in the 2019 anti-extradition bill movement. Participants would sing songs together in malls or other venues in a show of solidarity with pro-democracy protesters.
Lee was said to have participated in the demonstration with Arthur Chiang, Truvian Wong, Cheung Chung-lun and others. The student, who was 16 at the time, was arrested after displaying a “Hong Kong independence” flag, but was released without charge.
More than four years after his initial arrest, Lee was apprehended again at the Hong Kong International Airport last month and was later brought to court to face the unlawful assembly charge.
Local media reported on Monday that Lee was a secondary school student in the UK at the time of the offence and was set to begin his undergraduate studies in nutrition in a British university next month.
Lee’s lawyer said the student had found out that other defendants in his case were sentenced in 2022 and decided to return to Hong Kong to face his criminal liabilities. The case did not involve violence and the defendant was remorseful, the lawyer argued.
Magistrate Wong said taking part in an unlawful assembly was a serious offence and young offenders should be punished by non-custodial sentencing. But the defence called on the court to impose a jail term instead of sentencing Lee to a detention centre, a training centre or a rehabilitation centre, which may detain the student for up to three years.
Taking into account Lee’s study prospects, the court adopted 12 weeks of imprisonment as the starting point of sentence and reduced it to eight weeks due to Lee’s guilty plea.
Beijing inserted national security legislation directly into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution in June 2020 following a year of pro-democracy protests and unrest. It criminalised subversion, secession, collusion with foreign forces and terrorist acts – broadly defined to include disruption to transport and other infrastructure. The move gave police sweeping new powers and led to hundreds of arrests amid new legal precedents, while dozens of civil society groups disappeared. The authorities say it restored stability and peace to the city, rejecting criticism from trade partners, the UN and NGOs.
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