Autism is not an excuse to say that one does not understand the legal consequences, judge says
Patrick Lam, the former acting chief editor of defunct Hong Kong outlet Stand News, leaves the District Court after he was granted bail in Hong Kong on Nov. 7 after his lawyer applied for a permanent stay of the publication's sedition trial over improper handling of evidence. (Photo: AFP)
A 23-year autistic pro-democracy supporter has been sentenced to one year in prison by a Hong Kong trial court after he was convicted of sedition and inciting illegal assembly.
Chan Tai-sum was found guilty of three counts of seditious action and one count of inciting others to take part in an illegal assembly.
Judge Stanley Chan handed down the sentence after giving a one-third reduction to the 18-month jail term considering Tai’s mental condition, background, and his pleading guilty to the offenses.
Judge Chan said “the defendant having autism is not an excuse to say that he does not understand the legal consequences,” Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) reported on Nov. 15.
The judge also said that Tai committing the offense after the implementation of the national security law showed his disregard for the Beijing-imposed legislation as a “paper tiger.”
Chan, a Beijing-hand-picked national security judge, rejected Barrister Steven Kwan’s arguments that Tai committed the offense to gain social recognition due to his autism.
“Tai has autism, and had difficulty in face-to-face communication with other people,” Kwan said adding that the 23-year-old was “bullied during his time in remand.”
“Tai made those [social media] posts as an attempt to gain recognition from other people online, as he could not do so in real life. Tai did not give much thought to the posts before publishing them,” he further added.
Letters submitted by Tai to the court conveying his remorse for his actions were also disregarded by the judge.
Tai pleaded guilty to the four offenses last month, after Kwok Wai-kin, another national security judge, ruled against Chan’s barrister’s application to move the trial to the High Court.
The prosecution’s charge sheet states that Tai incited people to gather in Causeway Bay and Yau Tsim Mong on Christmas Eve through his posts on two social media groups on Dec. 13, 2021.
The prosecution has also accused Tai of publishing multiple “seditious” posts on an online forum between Aug. 19 and Dec. 8, 2021.
His posts allegedly described governments in the mainland and Hong Kong as “bandits,” and encouraged people to overturn the “tyranny” of the communist party.
Earlier, millionaire Jimmy Lai, a close associate of Hong Kong’s outspoken Cardinal Joseph Zen, was arrested in 2019 as the pro-Beijing administration unleashed a crackdown to snuff out a strong pro-democracy movement.
He was later found guilty on Oct. 25 during a hearing on two fraud charges. Authorities also closed down Apple Daily, a newspaper that Lai owned, which the activists considered another blow to press freedom and democracy in the politically troubled former British colony.
Meanwhile, the trial against Cardinal Zen and five other activists for their failure to register the "612 Humanitarian Relief Fund" under the Societies Ordinance, a British colonial-era law from 1911, is in progress.
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