A Hong Kong man has been found guilty of inciting others to wound the city’s police chief, a charge linked to comments left on Facebook in 2020.
Wearing an orange down jacket and a face mask, 53-year-old security guard Chau Kin-kwok appeared at District Court on Wednesday. Some of his family members were in the public gallery.
The case relates to two comments in Chinese that Chau wrote on Facebook three years ago in response to a post about the arrest of media mogul Jimmy Lai.
One read: “If we could gather tens of thousands of people to charge the police headquarters and stab Chris Tang and other senior officers, they wouldn’t be so arrogant anymore. The only method is to use violence against violence.”
Currently Hong Kong’s security chief, Tang was at the time the city’s police commissioner.
In the other comment, Chau wrote: “Hong Kong people are too gentle. It is impossible to deal with tyranny via peaceful means, especially the Chinese Communist Party.”
Finding Chau guilty of incitement to wound, judge Clement Lee said in Cantonese that he did not agree with the defence’s “attempt to downplay the inflammatory nature of the comments by saying they were made recklessly.”
Lee said if Chau had wanted to express his anger, he could have done so privately, such as in a messaging group with friends, instead of in a public setting.
“Anyone who was mentally sound would have been restrained, and would think twice before hitting the ‘enter’ key,” Lee added.
‘Clearly inflammatory’
Wednesday’s verdict followed a trial earlier this month, in which Chau testified, saying that he had made the comments out of anger.
In interviews with police before the trial, Chau said that he believed that the charges laid against Lai were a form of political persecution and that he was not happy with the state of Hong Kong. He also said he thought Tang was carrying out then-chief executive Carrie Lam’s “dirty work,” and that other senior officers were “bad people.”
In mitigation, Chau’s lawyer said that he had a history of mental illness having been diagnosed with adjustment disorder in 2018, and that incarceration would place a great deal of stress on him.
Lee said that Chau’s testimony had been unreliable and contradictory. For example, Lee said Chau had claimed to be “very angry and worried about what information children were absorbing” when he made the comments. However, Lee said Chau’s comments had been “clearly inflammatory.”
Chau will face sentencing on February 7, and will be held in custody till then. Incitement to wound charges are punishable by up to seven years in jail for District Court cases.
In the meantime, the court will await the submission of reports assessing the suitability of probation and community service orders, both alternatives to a custodial sentence. But Lee said there was no guarantee that he would deliver these alternatives.
