Hong Kong protests: defendant accused of defacing Chinese flag and starting street fire ‘confessed to offences involuntarily’
- Prosecutors accuse Wong Cheuk-lai, 24, of removing national flagoutside a swimming pool on Lantau Island, setting a fire outside the facility
- Wong denies criminal damage, desecrating the national flag and arson offences; his lawyer says confession was coerced
A solar panel technician accused of defacing the Chinese flag and starting a street fire during a 2019 Hong Kong protest confessed to the allegations involuntarily, his lawyer told a court on Monday.
The prosecution alleged Wong Cheuk-lai was among a group of anti-government protesters causing havoc in and around Tung Chung Swimming Pool on September 1, 2019, following online calls to stage demonstrations at the nearby Hong Kong International Airport.
The 24-year-old, who is on trial at the District Court, was said to have spray-painted a security camera outside the sports facility that night and removed the Chinese flag that was hanging there so others could set it alight, in offences prosecutors argued were committed “out of a sense of heroism”.
He was further accused of pouring petrol over a makeshift roadblock erected by protesters, before burning a water barrier outside the swimming pool.
Wong denies four charges – criminal damage, desecrating the national flag, attempted arson, and arson – before Judge Anthony Kwok Kai-on.
The court heard that the assailant captured on CCTV was a man with blonde hair, wearing a black sleeveless shirt, mask and arm sleeves.
On the first day of Wong’s trial, senior public prosecutor Vincent Lee Ting-wai said the defendant confessed to police that he was the man in question when shown the security footage.