Man Loses Appeal For Assaulting Police With A Poster

The High Court on Monday rejected a man's appeal against his conviction for assaulting a police officer by sticking a poster of Chief Executive Carrie Lam's husband on his back.

Ho Hiu-long, 26, was last month sentenced to three weeks in prison by Kowloon City Court. He had attached a poster to the back of an undercover policeman during a “Sing with me” protest in Harbour City in Tsim Sha Tsui on Christmas Eve in 2019.

Ho had already completed his jail sentence.

At the High Court, Ho's lawyers argued that he had mistakenly believed that the plainclothes officer was a protester.

But justice Judianna Barnes noted that others present at the scene had questioned the identity of the policeman and his undercover colleagues nearby, and had provoked and insulted them.

She said she believed that Ho had heard these insults and must have suspected that the black-clad man he was approaching with the poster was a police officer.

Barnes said while Ho claimed that he had also stuck posters on the backs of other people wearing black at the mall, this doesn’t mean that everyone had agreed to his act.

Every time he did that to others without their permission, he committed battery, the judge said, adding that she was not convinced that Ho honestly believed the officer would consent to having the poster stuck to him.