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Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Agnes Chow freed from jail

蘋果日報 2021/06/12 19:06


Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Agnes Chow was released from prison on Saturday morning, after serving nearly seven months for her role in a mass siege of police headquarters during the 2019 anti-government protests.
Chow, 24, emerged from the maximum-security Tai Lam Centre for Women at around 10 a.m. in a correctional services vehicle, surrounded by a media scrum and a dozen supporters. She did not speak to the media and left in a private car.
Several supporters arrived as early as 8 a.m., braving the rain to catch a glimpse of Chow. Holding up yellow umbrellas and wearing yellow masks — a color adopted during the anti-government protests — they shouted “add oil,” a phrase widely used in Hong Kong that roughly translates to “keep it going.”
Chow was handed a ten-month jail sentence in December last year for organizing an unlawful assembly outside police headquarters in June 2019. The Hong Kong system grants inmates a one-third reduction of their sentence for good behavior.
She uploaded an image of a solid black square on Instagram on Saturday afternoon, her first post on social media in half a year.
“These painful six months and 20 days are finally over. Thank you to the friends who had come out in the rain,” she wrote.
She went on to say that it was time for her to take a good rest, since her body had “become so weak” while she was in prison.
The post received 34,000 “likes” in half an hour, with fellow activist and self-exiled former lawmaker Nathan Law commenting: “Rest well.”
Chow, a former member of the Demosisto political group, was initially imprisoned at the medium-security Lo Wu Correctional Institution, and later sent to Tai Lam Centre for Women at the end of last year. Police did not give an explanation for her transfer.
Fellow Demosisto activists Joshua Wong and Ivan Lam received jail terms of 13 and a half months and seven months respectively over the police headquarters siege.
Fluent in Japanese, Chow has a significant following in Japan and has been dubbed the “goddess of democracy” by Japan’s media.
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