Lawmaker arrested for ‘desecrating national flag’ during October council meeting

Cheng speaking to reporters after making bail at 1am today. Screenshot: Passion Times via Facebook
Cheng speaking to reporters after making bail at 1am today. Screenshot: Passion Times via Facebook

Localist lawmaker Cheng Chung-tai was arrested last night and charged with desecrating both the national Chinese flag and Hong Kong SAR flag at a legislative meeting last year.

Cheng announced on Monday that he’d received a call from police to pick up a prosecution notice from the Central Police Station, but asked for the notice to be sent to him at LegCo as he was “occupied”. During a press conference, he called the call for his arrest “unreasonable and ridiculous”.

Cheng, 33, told reporters that he was met by 14 Criminal Investigation Division (CID) police officers yesterday evening while on his way record a radio talk show in Sham Shui Po. He was taken to Central Police Station and charged with desecrating the national flag and desecrating the Special Administrative Region flag.

The lawmaker, who is also the chairman of localist group Civic Passion, was released on bail at 1am today and will appear before the Eastern Magistrates’ Courts next Friday. The 33-year-old was charged in relation to an incident that took place during a council meeting on Oct. 19 last year, where he flipped over mini Chinese and Hong Kong flags some pro-Beijing councillors had placed on their desks (12:05 mark):




Said pro-Beijing lawmakers were missing during the meeting, as they had staged a walkout to bar localist lawmakers Baggio Leung and Yau Wai-ching from re-taking their oaths. Cheng said at the time that he turned the flags over to protest what he saw as “cheap patriotism”.

According to the National Flag and National Emblem Ordinance, anyone convicted of desecrating the national flag or national emblem by publicly and wilfully burning, mutilating, scrawling on, defiling or trampling on it is liable to a fine of HKD50,000 and three years’ imprisonment.

Cheng is one of seven democratic lawmakers currently battling challenges to disqualify them from the council. Social welfare lawmaker Shiu Ka-chun and Legislative Councillor Tanya Chan are both facing prosecution over the 2014 Occupy protests, whilst lawmakers Lau Siu-lai, “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, Nathan Law, and Edward Yiu are all facing judicial reviews over the way they took their oaths.

Speaking to reporters after his release, Cheng said he saw the crackdown on radical lawmakers as a “general cleansing”. “The goal of this is very obvious, it’s to remove all ‘trouble’ before Carrie Lam takes office [as Chief Executive in July].”



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