He was convicted for his participation in an “illegal meeting”. Previously, he had to quit his job as a teacher. He became famous during the 2019 protests for having personally suffered the violent repression of the police. His friends and his former students paid tribute to him in the room.
Hong Kong () – The Hong Kong authorities sentenced former teacher and publisher Raymond Yeung to nine months in prison on charges of illegal assembly. The man is one of the leading figures in the autonomous territory’s democratic movement – now increasingly dependent on Beijing. He was left blind in one eye after being hit by a police bullet during the 2019 protests.
The 32-year-old activist appeared yesterday before Judge Ada Yim, during a hearing at the Eastern Magistrates’ Courts. He pleaded guilty to two counts of his participation in an “illegal assembly.” Local sources reported that, despite the serious injuries he suffered, his sentence was not reduced.
At the end of the hearing, the defendant’s lawyer said that Yeung – famous in his home country as “the professor who was shot in the eye” – had already suffered the consequences of what he called a “stupid miscarriage of justice”. He had previously lost his job as a teacher at a leading girls’ college and was unable to fully recover his sight after the incident.
The former educator, who founded a publishing house called Hillway Culture in 2016, tried to rebuild his life and, during the trial, pleaded guilty to speed up the judicial process, hoping to see his sentence reduced. However, the prosecution stressed that the officers had warned him of the possible consequences if he participated in the protest, and that the police acted within the law, following the instructions of the authorities.
The magistrate sentenced Yeung to nine and fifteen months in prison for each of the crimes charged against him. However, in the sentence a deduction of the sentence was applied, establishing that the two crimes could be served simultaneously for a total of nine months. At the end of the hearing, while Raymond Yeung was escorted by the agents to take him to prison, a group of friends and former students present in the room paid tribute to him, greeted him and said: “see you later”.
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