A Hong Kong court sentenced a US lawyer to prison for a scuffle with a plainclothes police officer at the height of democracy protests in 2019.
Samuel Bickett, 37, was given a term of four months and two weeks yesterday on one charge of assaulting a police officer. The former Asia-Pacific compliance director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch was found guilty last month and denied bail.
Hong Kong Magistrate Arthur Lam described Bickett’s crime as a “serious threat to public order,” saying that the policeman sustained multiple injuries.
Lam said that two weeks were added to the sentence because the assault occurred in a crowded area and Bickett’s actions might have incited others to violence.
A survey of members by the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong in May found that more than 40 percent of respondents said that they might leave the territory, with Singapore among the most popular alternatives.
Lawmakers in the US expressed concern to US President Joe Biden last week over what they called China’s “ceaseless assault” on democracy in Hong Kong.
They asked Biden in a letter what his administration was “doing to coordinate with allies and partners to ensure that the private sector” knows about the risk to US citizens in Hong Kong posed by the National Security Law.
Bickett, who said the officer was attacking people with a baton in a subway station, wrote in a statement before his conviction that the verdict was “entirely unsupportable by both the law and the evidence in this case.”
The South China Morning Post quoted prosecutors as saying that Bickett tried to take a baton from Hong Kong Police Force Senior Constable Yu Shu-sang, punched him and knelt on him.
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
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