4 former University of Hong Kong student leaders jailed for 2 years for praising knife attack on police officer in 2021

Four former student leaders from the University of Hong Kong (HKU) were each jailed for two years on Monday for praising a knife attack on a police officer in 2021, with a judge calling their actions premeditated and an “open defiance of the law”.

The District Court sentenced the quartet after they earlier pleaded guilty to inciting violence. An initial charge of advocating terrorism, an offence under the Beijing-decreed national security law, was dropped as part of a deal with prosecutors.

The convicted four are: former student union president Charles Kwok Wing-ho, 22; ex-student union council chairman Kinson Cheung King-sang, 22; former residential hall representative Chris Todorovski Shing-hang, 21; and ex-arts association representative Anthony Yung Chung-hei, 21.

The defendants admitted to passing a resolution at a student union council meeting in 2021 lauding the “honourable sacrifice” of 50-year-old Leung Kin-fai, who stabbed a constable before committing suicide a week earlier on the July 1 anniversary of the city’s return to Chinese rule.

Judge Adriana Noelle Tse Ching slammed the defendants for abusing their council positions to endorse extreme violence against police, despite the risk of reviving the social unrest that rocked Hong Kong in 2019.

“In committing the offence, not only did they pay absolutely no regard to the condition of the [injured] police officer, his family and the effect of the resolution on public law and order, they in fact glorified the violence,” Tse said.

She said that even a child would realise that honouring Leung’s “vicious and cold-blooded” attack on the officer would be “extremely wrong”, but the defendants still chose to pay tribute to him “in the most public and formal manner”.