Detained Hong Kong activist Owen Chow jailed for 3 days over removing complaint form from prison
Hong Kong Free Press
Detained activist Owen Chow has been sentenced to three days in prison over removing a complaint form about corrections officers from prison without prior approval.
Chow and his solicitor Phyllis Woo, who faced the same charge, were sentenced by Principal Magistrate Ivy Chui at the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Wednesday. Woo was fined HK$1,800, with Chui saying she had played a “passive” role in the plan to take a complaint form out of the detention centre for Chow.
“As a result of his personal experience and subjective views, [Chow] stubbornly passed the complaint form to [Woo]. I believe this was a reckless and foolish act,” Chui said in Cantonese.
Complaint form unauthorised
Chow and Woo were convicted over a letter of complaint that the solicitor had allegedly been given while visiting Chow at the Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre on May 2 last year.
Chow had intended to file a complaint to the government watchdog about corrections officers who had allegedly intercepted two books meant for him.
The court had earlier heard that Chow believed he would be denied authorisation to send out the complaint form. Chui on Wednesday said the document could have gone through, if only Chow had followed the protocol for submitting complaints in detention.
Chui found Chow and Woo guilty last month after they earlier pleaded guilty, saying that they both went ahead with the plan to transport the document out of the Lai Chi Kok detention centre, knowing that they had not been granted authorisation to do so.
Chow ‘lost faith’
On Wednesday, lawyers for the defence asked the court to consider two cases involving unauthorised items being transported into a detention centre. One case, involving two packets of cigarettes, resulted in a fine of HK$450, and the other, involving 19 unauthorised items, came with a HK$1,000 fine.
Jeffrey Tam, representing Chow, said Chow had only meant to file the complaint to the government watchdog, not to insult it. “It was a serious complaint, not an abuse of the system,” he said.
Woo’s lawyer, Wong Ching-yu, said that the likelihood of dangerous items being trafficked out of a detention centre was significantly lower than such items being transported in.
Wong also said that Woo was inexperienced, having only been a solicitor for seven months at the time of the offence, adding that she was likely to face a disciplinary hearing which could see her licence revoked.
Chui said she accepted Wong’s submission that the likelihood of dangerous objects being transported out of the detention facility was slim, but said that moving unauthorised items in or out of prison held equal weight under the law.
She also cited Chow’s mitigation letter, saying that she had taken into consideration his “loss of faith” in the prison system after repeated incidents, and said she had found no illegal or improper content in the books that were intercepted.
Chui sentenced Chow to three days in prison, served consecutively with his five-year jail sentence for rioting in 2019, while Woo’s HK$1,800 fine will be deducted from her cash bail.
‘Tip of the iceberg’
Chow’s letter, which was not read out in court, was posted on the ex-activist’s social media pages.
“It is not because of an isolated incident that I have lost confidence in the prison complaints and mailing system,” he wrote, adding that other investigations by the Correctional Services Department were “unsubstantiated.”
“When the human rights situation in a society declines, prisons are bound to follow. This case is just the tip of the iceberg of corrections officers obstructing inmates from exercising their rights,” he added.
He also said he was ashamed that he had dragged Woo into the matter: “Regardless of the outcome of this case, she will have to face a disciplinary hearing at the Law Society, and for that I sincerely apologise.”
Chow was found guilty in May in a high-profile national security case relating to an unofficial primary election that aimed to select candidates for the Legislative Council election in 2020.
Together with other candidates who ran in the primary’s East New Territories geographic constituency, Chow will have his mitigation plea heard in September. He faces up to life imprisonment if convicted.
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