Hong Kong social worker Jackie Chen has been jailed for three years and nine months, after a retrial found her guilty of rioting during the 2019 protests and unrest.
Chen, 48, appeared before Deputy District Judge May Chung on Wednesday morning to face sentencing along with three co-defendants for taking part in a riot in Wan Chai on August 31, 2019.
The social worker was initially cleared of rioting midway through her first trial in September 2020, but the Department of Justice successfully appealed the acquittal. She pleaded not guilty when she faced a retrial in December 2024, but was convicted last month.
In her “reasons for verdict” judgment in March, the judge wrote that Chen made “fictitious” allegations about police enforcement when she spoke through a loudspeaker during a demonstration near Hennessy Road and Luard Road in Wan Chai.
Chen’s continuous shouting “roused the emotions of those gathered to be more hostile to police,” the judge ruled.
The three other defendants – Lai Pui-ki, Chung Ka-nang, and Jason Gung – had been acquitted by the original trial judge in 2020. After their acquittals were overturned, the trio pleaded guilty in September, ahead of the retrial.
Judge Chung adopted five years of imprisonment as the starting point of the sentence for the four defendants. She offered a 30 per cent sentencing discount to Lai, Chung, and Gung for their guilty pleas.
The judge reduced the prison terms of the four defendants by 10 months, citing a long judicial process that lasted for more than five years since their initial arrests in August 2019.
The defence, including Chen’s lawyer, had pleaded for a shorter jail sentence, saying a “delay” in the case by the prosecution had caused “immense stress” on their clients.
The defence previously questioned why the Department of Justice took almost a year to give the court and the defendants a draft of the appeal, after indicating its intention to challenge the acquittals in November 2020.
The appeal hearing did not take place until July 2023. The case was sent back to the District Court for a retrial in October that year, after Chen failed to challenge the retrial at the city’s top court.
The judge ruled on Wednesday that there was no “unreasonable delay” in the case. The first trial involved many defendants, and the appeal process was “complicated” by the fact that some defendants had left Hong Kong following their acquittals in the first trial, she said.
Chen, who was frequently seen on the front line of protests in 2019 to monitor police conduct, was given an additional five-month discount for factors including her contribution to society as a social worker and potential revocation of her license.
While Chen was sentenced to three years and nine months behind bars, the three co-defendants each received a prison term of two years and five months.
When handing down the sentences, Judge Chung said the protest in Wan Chai on August 31, 2019, involved at least 500 demonstrators. There was large-scale arson as some protesters set objects on fire, and the crowd remained at the scene despite repeated warnings and use of dispersal apparatus, including the water cannon, by the police.
The protest on the main carriageway in Wan Chai could “get out of control” at any time and lead to “extremely serious” consequences, the judge remarked.
The maximum sentencing for rioting is 10 years of imprisonment, but the prison term meted out by the District Court is capped at seven years.
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.”
