Ex-Hong Kong lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting gets 37 months’ jail over Yuen Long riot

A former opposition lawmaker has been jailed for three years and one month for rioting at a railway station during the 2019 protests in Hong Kong, with the judge saying his presence as a political figure aggravated the conflict and heightened others’ emotions.

Lam Cheuk-ting, 47, who received the heaviest punishment among the seven defendants at Thursday’s District Court hearing, is already serving a sentence of six years and nine months for subversion for his role in an unauthorised “primary” election in 2020.

An appeal against that conviction is pending, but should it fail, Lam would serve a minimum of nine years and seven months.

Six other men who stood trial with Lam were handed sentences ranging from two years and one month to two years and seven months.

The seven were convicted last December of taking part in the riot at Yuen Long MTR station on the night of July 21, 2019. Another group of about 100 white-clad rioters, whom Lam and others confronted inside the station’s turnstile gates, instigated another riot, and some have since been convicted.

District Judge Stanley Chan Kwong-chi earlier said Lam and other participants provoked the riot. He ruled that Lam had stirred up emotions at the scene as he labelled the white-shirted men, who were seen holding placards saying “Protect the homeland”, as gangsters.

“He was a member of the Legislative Council who enjoyed certain political fame in society,” the judge said. “He came in person to the Yuen Long station and made the confrontation even worse.”