Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Agnes Chow released from prison

HONG KONG: Hong Kong prodemocracy activist Agnes Chow was released on Saturday from prison on the second anniversary of the city’s huge democracy rallies, with police out in force and protests now all but banned.

Two thousand officers have been placed on standby after social media calls for residents to commemorate the failed democracy demonstrations.

Authorities have also kept a coronavirus prohibition on public gatherings. A Beijing-imposed national security has also criminalised much dissent and most of the city’s democracy leaders have been arrested, jailed or fled.

Chow, 24, was mobbed by waiting media as she walked free from prison on Saturday, but made no comment.

Chow was jailed for 10 months in December last year for crimes including inciting citizens to take part in an unauthorised assembly. She was released from the Tai Lam Correctional Institution in Tuen Mun, in Hong Kong, at about 10am.

The main representative of the Chinese government in Hong Kong said on Saturday people trying to turn the city into a “pawn in geopolitics” were the “real enemies” and Beijing was the true defender of the city’s special status.

“Those trying to turn Hong Kong into a pawn in geopolitics, a tool in curbing China, as well as a bridgehead for infiltrating the mainland, are destroying the foundation of one country, two systems,” Luo Huining, director of China’s Hong Kong liaison office, said.