HONG KONG -- Agnes Chow Ting, one of the most prominent Hong Kong democracy activists, was released from prison on Saturday after serving about six months over her role in an illegal demonstration outside the city's police headquarters two years ago.
Chow, 24, walked out of the Tai Lam Centre for Women, a correctional facility in northern Hong Kong, at about 10 a.m. local time, greeted by her family and a swarm of media. She did not speak to reporters on exiting the prison gate, immediately climbing into a waiting car and leaving.
She was originally remanded in Lo Wu Correctional Institution, another women's correctional facility near the border with Shenzhen, but was transferred to Tai Lam at the end of last year.
Chow was charged with inciting and taking part in unauthorized assembly on June 21, 2019. Her prison sentence was handed down last December, a day before her birthday. She burst into tears when her sentence was read in court.
At the same trial, activists, Joshua Wong and Ivan Lam Long-yin were sentenced to 13.5 months and seven months in prison, respectively, on similar charges. Lam, 26, was released in April, but the imprisoned Wong received another 10-month sentence last month for joining an unauthorized observance of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in June 2020
Pro-democracy activists Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam, center, and Joshua Wong arrive at the West Kowloon Magistrates' Courts in November 2020 to face charges related to illegal assembly. © Reuters The trio were core members of the pro-democracy group Demosisto. Founded in 2016, it developed from a protest movement in the early part of the decade led by students campaigning against a national education curriculum. Critics said its teaching materials and contents glorified the Chinese Communist Party and its rule.
After successfully forcing the government to all but abolish the curriculum, the trio took a leading role in the Umbrella Movement in 2014 that called unsuccessfully for universal suffrage for electing the city's chief executive. The political group eventually decided to disband itself, immediately before Beijing imposed a national security law on Hong Kong in June 2020.
Chow was also arrested in August for inciting secession, which is a charge under the national security law. This could have led to her extradition to mainland China for trial and a risk of a maximum penalty of life imprisonment, but she was not indicted on this count.
The city's pro-democracy media tycoon Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, who was arrested on the same day as Chow, was later prosecuted under the national security law on alleged collusion with foreign forces. The founder of the outspoken Apple Daily newspaper is already serving a combined 20 months in prison for participating in multiple illegal assemblies, but the charge against him based on national security law could carry a life sentence.
Chow has been seen as a leading figure among the city's young activists. She is especially well-known in Japan, where she has visited several times to speak on Hong Kong's democracy struggle in fluent self-taught Japanese. Her Twitter account, written in Japanese, had 578,000 followers as of Saturday.
The latest update to her account in mid-February by the administrator relayed Chow's message about being in prison.
"Prison life is tough, both physically and mentally. When I am released from prison in June, I would like to rest my body for a short while."