Activist jailed three months for not submitting info

A former leader of the now-defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, Leung Kam-wai, was on Wednesday sentenced to three months in prison after pleading guilty to failing to comply with a demand to provide police with information about the alliance’s activities.

Leung and four other former standing committee members of the alliance, Chow Hang-tung, Chan To-wai, Tang Ngok-kwan and Tsui Hon-kwong, were accused of breaching the Implementation Rules for Article 43 of the National Security Law on September 8 this year. All of them except Leung pleaded not guilty to the charge.

West Kowloon Court’s sentence on Wednesday is the first ever sentence for the offence.

In sentencing, acting chief magistrate Peter Law distinguished the case from other cases involving a failure to submit information to authorities, saying Leung had deliberately refused to submit the information required.

He noted that the police had later found some of the information needed at the alliance’s office.

Law set the starting point for Leung’s sentence at four-and-a-half months in prison, but reduced it to three months due to his guilty plea, with one month to be served concurrently with a previous nine-month jail term for Leung over his role in a banned June Fourth vigil last year.