Hong Kong protests: first defendant to plead guilty to riot charge jailed for four years

Lifeguard Sin Ka-ho, 22, pushed police barricades and hurled objects at officers outside the Legislative Council on June 12

Officials called that clash a riot, a categorisation that fuelled what would become months of a wider anti-government movement

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Sin Ka-ho has been jailed for four years in connection with the riot outside the Legislative Council on June 12. Photo: Winson Wong

Published: 3:30pm, 15 May 2020Updated: 10:34pm, 15 May 2020

The first defendant to plead guilty to a riot charge in connection with last year’s anti-government protests in Hong Kong was jailed for four years by a court on Friday.

Lifeguard Sin Ka-ho, 22, rammed police barricades and hurled objects at officers outside the Legislative Council on June 12 after it announced the second reading of the now-withdrawn Fugitive Offenders Bill, originally scheduled for the day, would be postponed indefinitely.

District judge Amanda Woodcock said a deterrent sentence was needed as the case was very serious, with Sin caught red-handed after he “doggedly and relentlessly” assaulted police at the doors of the legislature in a “direct attack on the rule of law”.

“Such violence cannot be tolerated in a civilised and diversified society,” she said. “His best mitigation is his guilty plea.”

Government officials have called this protest a riot. But that categorisation quickly became one of the contentious points fuelling what would become months of a wider anti-government movement, with protesters naming the retraction of that label as one of their five demands.

Police fire tear gas at protesters in Admiralty on June 12 last year. Photo: K.Y. Cheng

More than 8,300 people have since been arrested. Among them, 1,617 have been prosecuted, with 595 facing a riot charge, which is punishable by 10 years in jail, but capped at seven years in the District Court.