Ousted lawmaker ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung stabbed while protesting outside Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong
- An elderly man was arrested after the assault, which came during a protest over statements by the office aimed at opposition lawmaker Dennis Kwok
- Leung was later released from hospital after treatment for what his party chairman said were minor injuries
Disqualified legislator “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung was injured in an attack as he protested outside Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong on Thursday.
Police arrested an elderly man at the scene in connection with the attack, which happened on Connaught Road West in Sai Ying Pun shortly before 3pm.
A police spokeswoman said Leung was attacked with a sharp object and injured in the waist.
He was subsequently taken to Queen Mary Hospital in Pok Fu Lam for treatment and later discharged.
Officers arrested an 81-year-old male retiree at the scene. In a video recorded as he was taken away, the man can be heard saying: “[Leung] is a bad guy, why meddle with the liaison office? I’m Chinese!”
Leung was among about a dozen people on Thursday protesting statements the liaison office made last week attacking opposition lawmaker Dennis Kwok.
The office, together with the Hong Kong Macau Affairs Office, had criticised Kwok for allowing filibustering tactics to delay the selection of a new chairman for the Legislative Council’s House Committee, over which he now presides. Both accused him of violating his oath of office.
“I was doing an interview with a member of the foreign press, when I felt I was stabbed from behind and felt pain,” Leung said following Thursday’s assault. “I saw [the assailant] holding a metal object, and he was shouting abuse at me, saying I was ‘creating trouble’.”
Leung’s party, the League of Social Democrats, later claimed the man had said he was “trying to help the police to kill Leung”.
“It’s most regretful. The liaison office kept saying there are rioters, but there’s an attack right outside the liaison office, will they condemn these violence too?” party chairman Raphael Wong Ho-ming said after the attack, referencing the office’s repeated condemnations of anti-government radicals during months of social unrest that consumed the city.
“We were some distance from [the attack] at the time, but the man was holding a metal object to stab Long Hair. There’s a mark and a wound, although it’s not serious,” he said.
A message on Leung’s Facebook said the weapon involved was the bit of a pneumatic drill.
Additional reporting by Danny Mok
