A Hong Kong court has convicted an 18-year-old man of sedition after he scrawled “seditious words in a commercial building bathroom on three occasions. Leung Kai-lok was caught during a national security police stakeout.
Magistrate Victor So handed down judgement on Wednesday morning at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Court, Sing Tao Daily reported.
The magistrate did not accept a psychiatric report submitted earlier by the defence, which stated that the defendant showed symptoms of autism and suffered from a dissociative disorder when he wrote the phrases on the wall.
Leung was arrested in July last year by national security police. He was accused of leaving seditious messages on the wall of a male bathroom inside China Hong Kong City in Tsim Sha Tsui on three occasions between July 17 and 21 when he worked as a part-time clerk at the Consulate of Vanuatu.
The seditious messages included “Bomb Li Ka-chiu to death” in Chinese, in an apparent reference to the city’s leader John Lee. He also scrawled the Chinese characters for “Gwong Si” – an abbreviated version of the 2019 protest slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, the Revolution of Our Times.” Courts have ruled the phrase carries seditious intent.
Leung pleaded guilty to three counts of criminal damage. He pleaded not guilty to one count of sedition.
Under the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance, known locally as Article 23, the maximum penalty for sedition was raised to seven years in jail in 2024, up from two years previously. Offenders found to have colluded with an “external force” face a maximum of 10 years behind bars.
Protests erupted in June 2019 over a since-axed extradition bill. They escalated into sometimes violent displays of dissent against police behaviour, amid calls for democracy and anger over Beijing’s encroachment. Demonstrators demanded an independent probe into police conduct, amnesty for those arrested and a halt to the characterisation of protests as “riots.”
Prominent psychiatrist testifies
Leung’s trial began in April. His defence argued that the defendant’s interviews with the police were recorded under threat and pressure from officers, and thus should be rejected, The Witness reported.
In the recorded interviews, Leung said that he had written the “seditious words” in the toilet cubicle to incite hatred against the government, and that he knew he had done something wrong.
A police officer from the police’s national security department, surnamed Hui, testified in court that he did not threaten Leung.
The policeman said he was ordered to conduct an investigation at the male bathrooms, where he sat in the sixth cubicle to monitor the situation. Leung later entered the first cubicle of the toilets, when the officer was alerted to the sound of a whiteboard marker being used.
Shortly after, Leung left the cubicle and entered the fifth cubicle to use the facilities. Hui then entered the first cubicle and discovered the seditious messages on the wall. Leung was arrested by another police officer after he exited the bathroom.
Wong Chung Kwong, a psychiatrist of over 40 years and former professor and chairman of the Department of Psychiatry of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, testified in court in April that Leung had suffered from autism since childhood.
Leung also suffered an dissociative disorder last July after he received poor DSE scores, and therefore he lost control of his mind, Wong told the court, according to The Witness.
The prosecutor said during closing statements in June that Wong’s psychiatric report was groundless.
