Man Jailed 3.5 Yrs Over 2019 Protest

A 23-year-old man who took part in an anti-government protest in 2019 was on Tuesday sentenced to three years and six months in prison.

The District Court heard that Kwok Ka-fai and eight others joined a protest on August 11, 2019 in Tsim Sha Tsui, where they had blocked the entrances and exits of the police station there. 

The nine were earlier convicted of rioting and eight of them had already been given jail sentences of up to three years and nine months.

In mitigation, Kwok’s lawyer quoted the 23-year-old’s former supervisor at work as saying that the defendant was young at the time of the offence, and that he was affected by disinformation online and made a wrong judgement.

The lawyer also told the court that Kwok looks forward to contributing to society in future, saying he had earned a building service engineering degree after he was arrested and plans to pursue an engineering master's degree while serving jail time.

But in passing sentence, judge Douglas Yau said the attacks on the police station were a serious matter and the protesters’ actions had exceeded the limits of expressing their demands.

He described their actions as a direct challenge to law enforcement and also an indirect challenge to the rule of law.