On Tuesday, four Hong Kong university students’ attempt to overturn their riot convictions and sentences through appeal were collectively refused by the Hong Kong Court of Appeal. Judge Derek Pang Wai-cheong expressed the court’s constrained patience towards riot defendants who claim to be reporters or humanitarian workers, without providing testimonies at their trials. this was reported by The Witness, a local news platform.
The appeal filed engaged four of the five defendants from the same case. These individuals were charged with rioting under the Prohibition on Face Covering Regulation and illegal weapon possession. All four initially intended to appeal both their convictions and sentences. Three of them eventually withdrew their appeals on conviction but continued with their appeals on sentencing.
The remaining student, who continued with the appeal against his conviction, argued that his conviction was unsafe as being part of the riot was not the only plausible explanation. The student’s counsel posited that the student could have been a reporter at the time, despite wearing a mask and helmets, indicating that the black t-shirt he wore represented his residential college.
The appellate court did not accept these claims, and Pang suggested these arguments were baseless. In the absence of the defendant’s testimonies, making assumptions about his presence at the riot scene was an exercise in conjecture. The court dismissed the appeal, siding with the prosecutors that the defendants’ proximity to the riot, and the presence of protester-like gear could be the only reasonable inference in the absence of the defendant’s testimony.
Regarding their appeal on sentence, the court found no disparity in their sentences, since the law they cited was only applicable for the same crime. Pang dismissed suggestions of disparity merely based on varying sentence lengths delivered by judges at the same court level for the same crime. He further noted the comparison of sentences for the same crime across different cases was futile.
The defendants unsuccessfully argued that other, seemingly more severe cases had lighter sentencing. This argument was rejected, with the court ruling that the defendants’ potential for causing serious traffic injuries made their case severe. As such, all appeals against sentencing were dismissed.
This case is linked to the protest at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) during the 2019 anti-extradition bill amendment protests. Protesters occupied CUHK in an attempt to block major highways connecting New Territories and Kowloon to instigate a strike. These efforts were intensified following the death of a student protester, allegedly due to medication delay caused by police intervention—the claim police denied.
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