Hong Kong protests: decoration worker, 64, jailed for more than 4 years for rioting and wounding at 2019 Yuen Long MTR attacks
- Ching Wai-ming, who was among white-clad mob that night, had assaulted three people in as many minutes, instructing accomplices to go after targets
- Violence at MTR station on night of July 21 marked one of the most divisive chapters in social unrest
A decoration worker in Hong Kong with past triad connections has been jailed for more than four years on rioting and wounding charges over a violent clash at Yuen Long MTR station that marked one of the most divisive episodes of the 2019 anti-government protests.
Ching Wai-ming, 64, was sentenced to 51 months behind bars at West Kowloon Court on Thursday for his “active” role in the chaos that night between July 21 and 22, 2019, during which a white-clad mob brandishing sticks and metal rods attacked protesters and commuters indiscriminately at the station.
The defendant was found to have assaulted three people in as many minutes and instructed his accomplices to go after their targets.
“The shock waves sent through society are evident in how the public was left in tumult,” Deputy District Judge Newman Wong Hing-wai said, adding it was “beyond doubt” the incident had opened a “chasm” in the city.
But Wong accepted the defence counsel’s “witty” submission that Ching was “a latecomer who left early”, and did not play a leading role in the attack.
The deputy judge said Ching deserved lesser time in jail as he had to undergo the ordeal behind bars again at an advanced age, adding many of his previous convictions dated back to more than two decades ago.
The court heard the decoration worker was among the 100 men in white who stormed the station that night and injured at least 45 people in what the perpetrators asserted was an act of self-preservation against “invading” anti-government protesters.
