By James Pomfret and Jessie Pang
HONG KONG (Reuters) – A Hong Kong court on Thursday convicted prominent former pro-democracy lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting for rioting after he was attacked by a white-shirted mob in July 2019 at the height of that year’s pro-democracy protests.
On the night of July 21, 2019, more than 100 white-shirted men stormed the Yuen Long MTR station in the territory’s northwest, attacking passers-by and journalists with clubs and sticks. Several of the assailants were jailed in 2021 for rioting and conspiring to wound with intent.
Lam, 47, a long-standing member of the Democratic Party, was arrested 13 months after the incident and charged with rioting and helping instigate the violence.
He told the court he had rushed to the scene to help, but ended up being taken to hospital with head, mouth, arm and wrist injuries that required 16-18 stitches, after being attacked.
District court judge Stanley Chan said he did not believe Lam went to mediate, but instead wanted to extract some political advantage, and his presence had stirred things up.
Lam, who had pleaded not guilty, appeared impassive with his arms folded in the dock, as the judgement was delivered. Some relatives started crying. Six other people were also convicted alongside Lam on Thursday.
Sentencing will take place at a later date. Rioting carries a maximum sentence of seven years in the district court.
The convictions come amid a years-long crackdown on dissent in the Asian financial hub after the 2019 protests, that has seen pro-democracy campaigners jailed or exiled, liberal civil society and media outlets closed, and an electoral overhaul that has blocked opposition democrats from elections.
The crackdown has been criticised by some countries like the U.S., but Beijing and Hong Kong authorities say all are treated equally under the law, and the two sets of national security laws enacted since 2020 have restored stability.
Lam is currently serving a six year, nine month sentence after being found guilty of a conspiracy to commit subversion under the Beijing-imposed national security law.
“Such a verdict is unjust for those brave people who were trying to save passengers including myself from being assaulted by (the) white shirt clad mob, and an act of self-defence,” Galileo Cheng, a journalist who was injured during the attack, told Reuters.
(Reporting by James Pomfret and Jessie Pang; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
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