Former Hong Kong opposition lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting has been sentenced to three years and one month in prison after being convicted of rioting in the 2019 Yuen Long mob attack.
District Judge Stanley Chan on Thursday handed Lam, formerly a lawmaker for the Democratic Party, the prison term after earlier finding him and six others guilty of rioting in Yuen Long on July 21, 2019, as the city was rocked by pro-democracy protests and unrest.
The other six defendants were given jail terms of up to two years and seven months, as the judge said he took into account the delay of the trial, which wrapped up more than five years since the incident.
Delivering the sentence on the former lawmaker, Judge Chan said that Lam’s role was “clearly different” from the other defendants and that he had “added fuel to the flames” rather than mediating violence.
“What [Lam] did… had no effect on monitoring police actions or de-escalating the tensions. Instead, he provoked the opposite side and stirred up conflicts,” Chan said in Cantonese.
On July 21, 2019, over 100 rod-wielding men dressed in white stormed the Yuen Long MTR station and attacked commuters and protesters coming home from a pro-democracy demonstration. Dozens – including Lam – were beaten and injured during the assault.
During the trial, Lam pleaded not guilty and said in his defence that he went to the station on that night as a lawmaker to mitigate violence and protect residents.
The official account of the incident evolved over a year, with the authorities eventually claiming it was a “gang fight” between two groups of people.
Last December, Chan ruled that Lam’s presence at the station had provoked the white-clad men and his behaviour at the scene had “fanned the flames,” adding that the incident was a result of a confluence of “two typhoons.”
The judge also said Lam went to Yuen Long for “political benefit,” highlighting his Facebook livestream during the incident as an attempt to “attract traffic.”
The judge said on Thursday that there was a riot involving people not dressed in white preceding the subsequent attack by the white-clad men: “This case is about the people not dressed in white, who stayed in the paid area – and there were more people involved beyond the seven defendants in this case.”
“What happened on July 21… should not be overshadowed by the later episode of the attack,” he added.
2019 unrest
Lam has been behind bars for over 1,400 days and is currently serving a six-year-and-nine-month jail term for conspiring to commit subversion. It was a result of the city’s largest national security case, in which 45 pro-democracy campaigners were convicted last year.
According to the Thursday ruling, Lam will serve three months of the latest sentence concurrently with his existing jail term, meaning he will have to remain behind bars for an extra two years and 10 months.
Protests erupted in June 2019 over a since-axed extradition bill. They escalated into sometimes violent displays of dissent against police behaviour, amid calls for democracy and anger over Beijing’s encroachment. Demonstrators demanded an independent probe into police conduct, amnesty for those arrested and a halt to the characterisation of protests as “riots.”
Police were criticised for responding slowly to the Yuen Long incident, with some officers seen leaving the scene or interacting with the white-clad men.
