Jailed Hong Kong activist Owen Chow and his lawyer have lost their appeals against convictions for removing a complaint letter from prison without prior approval in 2023.
Chow, one of 45 opposition figures convicted last year of conspiring to subvert state power under the Beijing-imposed national security law, appeared in the High Court on Monday alongside assistant solicitor Phyllis Woo.
Last year, a magistrate found the two guilty over a complaint letter that Chow gave to Woo during a prison visit in May 2023. The solicitor took the letter out of the Lai Chi Kok detention centre and sent it to the Ombudsman, a government watchdog.
The magistrate sentenced Chow to three days in jail and fined Woo HK$1,800 in August. The pair later appealed their convictions, while Chow also challenged his sentence.
Judge Judianna Barnes on Monday rejected the pair’s appeals against their convictions. However, she quashed Chow’s three-day jail term and ordered him to pay a HK$1,800 fine instead.
Barnes sided with the magistrate in finding that the letter of complaint was not authorised to leave the prison without being subject to security checks by the authorities.
She also agreed with the magistrate’s observation that Chow, in the absence of a correctional officer during his meeting with Woo in prison, had “discreetly” folded another document in half and concealed the letter therein, before giving the two documents to Woo.
Chow’s “purpose was for [Woo] to bring the unauthorised [letter of complaint] out of prison without the Correctional Services Department knowing,” Barnes wrote in the judgment.
The judge also noted that, based on CCTV footage, Woo had seen Chow folding the documents in half before giving them to her. She ruled that the lawyer was aware the letter of complaint was an unauthorised document.
But Barnes also noted that Chow was never informed of his right to apply to have the letter delivered out of prison by a third party, and that a fine would be an appropriate sentence for the activist.
Chow, wearing a brown jacket, threw a smile toward the public gallery and had a brief discussion with his lawyers before being led away by correctional officers.
The activist, currently serving seven years and nine months in prison for the national security case, has also appealed his subversion conviction and sentence, with a hearing scheduled for July.
Beijing inserted national security legislation directly into Hong Kong’s mini-constitution in June 2020 following a year of pro-democracy protests and unrest. It criminalised subversion, secession, collusion with foreign forces and terrorist acts – broadly defined to include disruption to transport and other infrastructure. The move gave police sweeping new powers and led to hundreds of arrests amid new legal precedents, while dozens of civil society groups disappeared. The authorities say it restored stability and peace to the city, rejecting criticism from trade partners, the UN and NGOs.
