Councillors Fined After Sai Ying Pun Protest

The police have issued fixed penalty tickets to several district councillors and their assistants who protested outside a sports centre in Sai Ying Pun that's being turned into a Covid-19 testing facility.

Officers accused the 10 of them of flouting social distancing rules, although they had scattered in groups of two and kept a distance between themselves.

The councillors, including Neo-Democrats' Roy Tam and independent Wong Wen-chi, were speaking against the government's voluntary testing scheme when the police fined them.

Tam said it's unreasonable that the police fined them.

He said they were district councillors holding a briefing for the press regarding a public health matter. "We had questioned why we are fined and the police failed to give a reasonable answer," said Tam.

Reporters covering the event also were asked to produce their papers and details of their ID card number copied by officers.

Tam also warned private doctors against volunteering to help collect samples for the mass testing being rolled out by the government, saying that may undermine the doctors' credibility since the mainland expert team has been exempted from registering their qualifications with local authorities.

The councillors also said they are concerned that free tests would pave the way for the government to introduce a “health code" in Hong Kong.

Some pro-government figures had called for the code, under which people who test negative for Covid-19 would be given a digital certificate and exempted from some social distancing rules. But health experts had expressed reservations about this plan.