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Indonesian court imprisons mahjong players for 7 months

Four Hong Kong men caught red-handed in a high-stakes mahjong game in Indonesia - apparently after a disgruntled wife of one of the players informed the police - have been sentenced to seven months in prison.

Chin Yin-hui, 48, Wong Kar-kui, 52, Wong Wah-kam, 59, and Johny Leung, 58, were found guilty on Thursday of breaking Indonesia's anti-gambling laws.

They were arrested in February in the city of Bandung, West Java, when caught playing a game in their hotel room.

Police showed the court photos of the men with surprised expressions on their faces and their hands in the air during the raid.

Outside the court, the wife of one of the men, a Chinese national, claimed she had called the police because she was 'sick of her husband gambling all the time'.

Police told the court the game involved a 'considerable amount of cash'.

The four were found guilty of violating the law by gambling.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Muslim nation and has tough anti-gambling laws.

A spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Indonesia said it had sent staff to follow up the incident.

He said the embassy would protect the rights of all Chinese people, but only within the bounds of the local legal system.

Hong Kong police, the government's Security Department and the Immigration Department had no knowledge of the case until they were alerted to an article in an Indonesian newspaper yesterday.

'So far we have received no request for assistance and we are not sure if the men were on holiday or were expatriates living in Indonesia,' a government spokesman said.

No request for help had been received by the Travel Industry Council, said executive director Joseph Tung Yao-chung, who believed the convicted men had not visited Indonesia using local travel agents.

Mr Tung stressed that the case should serve as a reminder that tourists had to abide by local laws and customs when travelling overseas.

The council would seek to collect information on gambling regulations in various countries and then circulate it among tour operators to better inform Hong Kong residents about the regulations.

The four have asked for time before deciding whether to appeal against the sentences.

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