The Hong Kong government has appealed to the city’s top court after a teenager was cleared of an unlawful assembly charge linked to a protest in 2019.
Mak Wing-wa, who was 16 at the time of his arrest, appeared before a five-judge panel at the Court of Final Appeal on Friday. He was previously found guilty, then acquitted upon appealing, of taking part in an unlawful assembly in Wong Tai Sin almost four years ago.
That day, protesters had gathered in the neighbourhood to protest the government’s ban on wearing face masks at demonstrations, The Witness reported. Mak was accused of shining a torch up at police officers who were on a pedestrian bridge.
Government prosecutor Karen Ng said a clip of the incident showed that Mak was near two others – a woman and a man – who were shining torches and laser beams at officers, and that Mak surely would have noticed their behaviour, according to Ming Pao. After the woman shone a laser beam at officers, Mak then took a torch light from the man and aimed it in the same direction, Ng said, showing that the three of them had gathered and acted together.
Representing Mak, barrister Wong Hay-yiu said the prosecution was relying on actions that took place over just one minute, “arbitrarily” concluding that he was guilty and neglecting the wider picture. Wong added that besides for that one minute, Mak had been minding his own business.
The verdict will be delivered at a later date, local media reported.
Just ‘playful’
Mak was found guilty in August 2021 of taking part in the unlawful assembly in Wong Tai Sin and sentenced to a detention centre, an alternative to imprisonment for male offenders below the age of 24.
He applied on the spot to appeal the conviction and sentence, and was granted bail pending the appeal hearing, InMedia reported.
Mak successfully overturned the conviction and sentencing during the High Court appeal hearing last August, with the judge saying it could not be ruled out that Mak was just “playful” and that his acts had no relation to the two others who were shining lights at the officers.
At the top court on Friday, Ng said she disagreed that Mak could have acted out of playfulness. She said Mak himself did not testify, so the judge should not speculate about his motives.
Hong Kong saw city-wide protests starting in June 2019, triggered by opposition towards a controversial extradition bill that would have allowed the transfer of fugitives to mainland China to stand trial. The bill was later axed, but the demonstrations ballooned into a wider movement against the Hong Kong and Beijing governments, and what protesters called an excessive use of force by police.
The protests sometimes escalated into violent displays of dissent against police behaviour, amid calls for democracy and anger over Beijing’s perceived encroachment.
Over 10,200 protest-related arrests were made during the months-long demonstrations, police said.
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