A Hong Kong artist has been handed another three-week suspended jail sentence for tagging “freedom” graffiti in Chinese.
Chan King-fai, representing himself, pleaded guilty to four counts of criminal damage at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Friday morning.
He stood accused of tagging graffiti that depicted the Chinese characters for “freedom” combined with dollar signs in Kwai Chung and Sha Tin in 2023.
In June, Chan separately pleaded guilty to 12 counts of criminal damage linked to tagging the same graffiti design in Central and Sheung Wan in January and February. He was handed a three-week jail sentence suspended for two years.
A suspended sentence means the defendant would not have to serve the jail term unless they reoffend within a certain time frame.
Magistrate Andy Cheng said on Friday that the two cases were similar and that it would have been more ideal if the four counts of criminal damage had been handled in June, too.
Cheng said the discovery of the graffiti by police at different times caused the case to be split into two.
It would only make sense to deliver the same sentence again, Cheng said, as he gave Chan a three-week suspended jail sentence, also suspended for two years.
The magistrate confirmed with Chan that he understood the meaning of a suspended sentence, to which he replied yes.
During mitigation, Chan told the court that he suffered from anxiety and had difficulty sleeping. During those moments, he would get drunk and “do wrong things.”
He said that since then, he had borrowed money from relatives to attend counselling programmes in an attempt to mend his relationships with family.
Friday marked the third time Chan has been charged over the graffiti design, which the court heard he had created at the end of 2022 to symbolise a desire for financial freedom.
After his third charge in June, the artist was remanded in custody but granted bail a month later.
His first arrest related to graffiti was in February 2023. He was sentenced in December that year to a one-year probation order after admitting to 20 counts of criminal damage.
