Cases dropped, cases and complaints not pursued, and one that's sadly ended in the conviction of five university students

 

Some dishes on offer at Jie Genge, 

a "yellow" restaurant that's been in the news

 

Let's begin with some good news, shall we?  (And no, I'm not referring to Carrie Lam having fractured her elbow and going on medical leave.)  Instead, I'm referring to government prosecutors deciding earlier today to drop their case against two owners of a Mong Kok restaurant accused of possessing offensive weapons and instruments fit for unlawful purpose! 

 

Reportedly, police officers had found "items including extendable batons, shields, gas masks, cable ties, reflective vests, press cards and posters with political slogans on them" in a room on a rooftop connected to Jie Genge, a popular member of the Yellow Economic Circle, last December.  Before anything else, I think it's instructive that this is what the authorities took to be "offensive weapons and instruments fit for unlawful purpose" since those words would tend to conjure up such as guns, explosives, knives and other (way) more dangerous objects for most folks.  

 

It's noteworthy too that the prosecution decided to "offer no evidence against the pair" after obliging restaurant owners Wong Hung-hin and Nicholas Shum to appear in court.  Also, despite the charges being dropped against them, Wong and Shum still didn't get away completely scot free.  Instead, like with singer-activist Anthony Wong Yiu-ming back in August, they were "handed a HK$2,000 bind-over order, which requires them to maintain good behaviour for 12 months" -- meaning they're put on notice that they're considered suspect citizens and are going to be watched closely? 

 

Someone else who one might expect the authorities to seek to prosecute but they thus far have not done so is Chan Tong-kai.  Should the name not ring a bell, here's pointing out that he is the murder suspect whose case led to plans to change Hong Kong's extradition rules which then triggered the mass protests in Hong Kong in 2019.  

 

Although he served time in jail for having withdrawn money from the credit card of the murder victim, who happened to have been his girlfriend, Chan Tong-kai has never been charged, let alone tried, for her murder -- even though there's strong evidence pointing to his being the individual who killed her when they were vacationing in Taiwan back.  Even stranger is the fact that he had been installed in a police safe house, and therefore protected by the police, from June of last year until recently. 

 

When this situation was first known, some people concluded that Chan Tong-kai was effectively a prisoner while living in the police safe house.  Even if this was so though, he legally was a free man then as well as now -- and it's small wonder that many people find this situation worth protesting about.  Chief among these is the mother of the murder victim, Poon Hiu-wing -- and today, she publicly lashed out at the individuals involved to the case, deeming them ""unrighteous people".  

 

For the record, the individuals in question are: Chan Tong-kai, his parents, his pastor and facilitator (Peter Koon, a pro-Beijing minister who's spoken out against the leaders of Hong Kong's Occupy movement), security minister Chris Tang, police chief Raymond Siu, as well as pro-Beijing politicians Starry Lee and Holden Chow.  Poon Hiu-wing's mother had asked to meet with them outside the government headquarters this morning to meet with her.  None of them turned up.

 

On the subject of non-pursuit of complaints: The Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) announced yesterday that the police had informed it that all but one of 27 complaints that the HKJA had filed against officers during the 2019 protests have been classified as “not pursuable”; this despite evidence, including ones in the forms of photos and videos, having been submitted along with the complaints.  

Sadly, this outcome was expected by most; this not least because the bodies that supposedly investigate and oversee crimes committed by the police tend to be pro-police (or, in one case, actually part of the police force).  And for the record, it's worth noting that the HKJA had filed its complaints with the Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC), whose independence has been questioned (and impotence asserted), but the body the one that contacted HKJA to relay the news was the Complaints Against Police Office, which is the police force’s internal complaints unit. 

 

Still, lest it be thought that Hong Kong's courts and prosecutors are not active, here's pointing out that five Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) students were yesterday sentenced to up to four years and 11 months in prison after being convicted of "rioting" on their university's campus on November 11, 2019 despite a "lack of evidence over the defendants’ level of involvement" in the battle waged between the police and protestors who had decided that CUHK needed to be defended from invasion by the authorities.

The one female among the five, Foo Hoi-ching, had elected to represent herself in court.  The most harshly penalized of the quintet, she wrote a moving letter to the judge to the judge (that has been translated into English and publicized in a series of Tweets by Lokman Tsui).  Some choice excerpts from it:

I do not agree with the law itself, nor do I feel I have done anything wrong.  Simply put, I do not think this is a reasonable sentence. In the eyes of some people, “the law is the law, and if you break the law, you need to bear responsibility”.  Others may also believe that the court’s ruling proves that the protesters’ behaviour is wrong, and their actions in vain. But I believe that authority does not equal correctness...

Under a totalitarian regime, the law is only a bloodless but violent tool of the authorities to control the people, and the court is not a place of justice.  In such a place, only attention is being paid to social order on a surface level, but the root cause of what is tearing the society apart is ignored.  When the penalties for political cases get heavier, some defendants will plead guilty or appeal to the judge, in order to reduce their sentence, but this does not necessarily mean they agree that the current law is moral or just.

The judge may point out that if you are not satisfied with the ruling, you can appeal. However, I no longer believe in Hong Kong’s judicial system, and even the highest courts may not listen to the voices of dissidents.I just want to take this opportunity to express my dissatisfaction. If the court hears what I have said, and believes that it is justified in giving me a heavy sentence to make me regret and reflect, then it will be just as it is.