Jailed activist Ken Tsang to become first Hong Kong inmate to vote in leadership election after abandoning appeal

Activist Ken Tsang Kin-chiu is set to become the first inmate to vote in a Hong Kong chief executive election this weekend, after he was jailed on Tuesday for assaulting police officers during the 2014 Occupy protests.

Tsang – a social worker and one of the 1,194 members of the Election Committee, which will choose the city’s next leader on Sunday – was jailed for five weeks, a day after he made an unexpected decision to give up the chance to appeal his convictions for assaulting police and resisting arrest in 2014.

Arriving at the High Court in the morning, Tsang vowed to cast his vote for chief executive from behind bars.

He said he had decided to abandon his appeal because the seven policemen who also assaulted him on the same night after his arrest – and faced a separate trial – had been put behind bars.

Tsang dismissed suggestions that fear of a longer sentence if he challenged the initial ruling had prompted him to give up, saying the jail term was never part of the subject of this appeal.

To back up his right to vote from behind bars, Tsang cited a 2008 judicial review lodged by lawmaker “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung and two prisoners, who succeeded in challenging the government’s curbs on prisoners’ voting rights.