Hong Kong protests: activist jailed for 16 months for organising 2019 illegal march in Yuen Long after mob attack

A Hong Kong activist has been jailed for 16 months for organising an unauthorised protest in 2019 against perceived police inaction over a mob attack at a railway station.

The District Court on Wednesday imposed the sentence on Max Chung Kin-ping, who pleaded guilty to organising an illegal procession on July 27, 2019, six days after an attack at Yuen Long MTR station in which a white-clad mob with metal rods and rattan canes attacked commuters and protesters, leaving at least 45 people injured.

Seven men who joined the attack have been jailed for up to seven years.

Judge Amanda Woodcock found the 42-year-old public relations consultant to be just as culpable as the key opposition figures who organised large-scale demonstrations without authorities’ approval during the social unrest.

Woodcock said that public anger at police and the perpetrators of the mob attack made it a “tinderbox scenario” and “a potential source of widespread violence” that materialised in the way police had feared from the start.

The judge added that although Chung did not appear to have much influence over radical participants who challenged police and paralysed traffic during the July 27 rally, nobody could have realistically believed the protest would have been peaceful, especially when it came on the heels of a “tense” situation at the railway station.