Hong Kong activist Agnes Chow spent her birthday in a prison cell for the first time of her life on Thursday, after being sentenced to ten months in jail a day earlier.

Chow, whose bail hearing is set for next week with plans for an appeal, was sentenced a day before she turned 24 for a protest in June last year outside the police headquarters.

Her former Demosisto party colleague Nathan Law, now living in self-exile in the United Kingdom, thanked her hard work and wished her a happy birthday in a Facebook post. He also hoped to enjoy Chow’s favorite green tea cake with her as soon as possible. Supporters left similar comments below Law’s post.

Chow had kept trying to move forward, and her friends had witnessed her growth from a teenager, Law said. Only Chow would know the hardship of the past few years of politics and now prison, as the times were difficult even for a “girl next door” pushed to the forefront of Hong Kong’s political struggle, he added.

He would be always willing to fight on with Chow, Law said, citing a slogan they used in her 2018 Legislative Council campaign.

Chow’s Facebook page posted a letter addressed from her last Friday when she was still remanded and awaiting sentencing. Life inside prison was long — with few ways to tell time — and boring with few activities, which made her lonely and sad, she said.

Chow said she looked forward to visits from others every afternoon, and also the evening when letters would come. Prison was cold and she could barely sleep with winds blowing through in the middle of the night, she said.

She was afraid of the sentencing as she worried about adapting to life behind bars, Chow said. She had plans for unboxing birthday presents and making a video for it, but all that was left for her was court documents. But Chow said she was honored to be involved in social movements, which had made her the person she was today.

Eric Cheung, the principal lecturer of law at the University of Hong Kong, said the sentences imposed on Chow and her former party colleagues Joshua Wong and Ivan Lam — who were jailed for 13.5 months and seven months — were too harsh.

They were charged with unauthorized assembly instead of the more serious charge of unlawful assembly, with the former lacking the element of behavior disrupting peace or causing violence found in the latter, according to Cheung. It showed the police did not have enough evidence to charge them with unlawful assembly, Cheung said.

Magistrate Lily Wong may have considered the elements of the case using the standard of unlawful assembly, so that she considered the trio responsible for violent incidents that they did not commit, Cheung said.

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