Hong Kong man found guilty of breaching social distancing rules during 2020 protest loses appeal
Hong Kong Free Press
A Hong Kong man found guilty of breaching social distancing rules during a protest four years ago has lost an appeal against his conviction.
David Li Kwok-wing, 22, appeared at the High Court’s Court of Appeal on Thursday. His case relates to an incident in August 2020, when people gathered to mark the anniversary of the death of Alex Chow, a student who died during the pro-democracy protests and unrest the year before.
Li was charged with violating Covid-19 regulations, which at the time capped the maximum size of gatherings at two. He pleaded not guilty but was convicted in 2022, and was handed a 15-month probation order.
The court heard that Li had already finished the probation order last May, but is currently serving a three-month jail term over a contempt of court conviction. He was sentenced last week after being found guilty of harassing three witnesses outside court, after they had given testimony in a protest-related case.
Judge Frankie Yiu on Thursday summarised the arguments of Li’s legal representative in the Covid rules-related case. Yiu said his representative argued that the testimony given by a police officer during Li’s trial was contradictory, and that footage of the incident did not fully align with the facts of the case, InMedia reported.
But Yiu rejected the arguments and sided with the government’s prosecutors, who said it was understandable for the officer to omit some details as quite some time had passed since the incident.
Li’s legal team also said that Li and the three people with whom he was said to be gathering were wearing masks, so officers could not confirm who was talking. In response, Yiu cited the prosecution’s case that police had in fact seem them chatting, specifically about the police force and how the government handles affairs. Therefore, they had a common purpose, they said.
Li was a familiar face at protests that followed the 2019 unrest, when large-scale demonstrations gave way to smaller lunchtime protests – often in shopping malls in business districts – amid Covid-19.
He was also convicted of breaching social distancing rules during a protest in the IFC mall in Central in April 2020, for which he was given a 12-month probation order. Separately, he was found not guilty of disorder in public places in relation to a lunchtime protest at the Landmark shopping centre in Central in September 2020.
Protests erupted in Hong Kong in the summer of 2019 in response to a controversial extradition bill that would have allowed the transfer of criminal suspects to mainland China to stand trial. The demonstrations ballooned into a wider display of opposition against the Hong Kong and Beijing governments, as well as police’s alleged use of excessive force in handling the protests.
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