A court has found Civic Party member Ken Tsang Kin-chiu guilty of three counts of assaulting police and resisting arrest in relation to events that took place during the pro-democracy Occupy protests in 2014. He has been cleared of the other two counts of resisting arrest.
Tsang, 40, was accused of attacking police officers with liquid from the embankment of the underpass at Lung Wo Road and then resisting arrest during the Umbrella Movement demonstrations. He was charged with one count of police assault and four of resisting arrest.
He will be sentenced on May 30.
Tsang arrived at the Kowloon City Magistrates’ Court on Thursday afternoon to a crowd of supporters holding yellow umbrellas. The courtroom’s spectator stand was also filled to the brim with members of the public and journalists.
Magistrate Peter Law ruled that the footage relating to the incident was admissible, stating that it showed a continuous chain of events and was of a clear quality. Law said that each witness, and each time frame during the incident, had to be independently evaluated. He stressed that it was important for testimonies to be based on the witnesses’ own memories rather than the footage, according to the updates on Tsang’s official page.
Police testimony
Law questioned how two police officers could mistake each other for themselves and noted that their signatures appeared on the other’s witness statements. Law said that the court would not accept their testimony.
However, he said he believed the accounts of police sergeant Ching Ying-wai – who earlier testified in court about the process of subduing the suspect – and others were based on the witnesses’ memories as opposed to video evidence.
Law said that the footage and the pictures taken at the police station show that the man who poured the liquid on the night of the incident, and the man who was arrested, shared the same facial features and similar shoes, and was therefore the same person.
In a separate ongoing court case, seven police officers are facing charges for allegedly kicking and punching Tsang in a “dark corner” in Tamar, Admiralty on the same day. They will stand trial this year and have pleaded not guilty.
