'Occupy Central' activist arrested after 22 months

Melody Chan Yuk-fung, an Occupy Central activist, was arrested on May 8 for organising a public meeting against the Public Order Ordinance and for taking part in an unauthorised assembly on July 1, 2011. Chan submitted no plea and the case is now adjourned to next month.

The trainee solicitor and former journalist's arrest has been labelled by Occupy Central supporters as a tactic to suppress the movement to occupy the city centre in a pro-democracy protest next year.

But the Department of Justice said in a rare statement on May 10 that the prosecution decision was free from any political consideration as it was made before the movement surfaced.

Police chief Andy Tsang Wai-hung said that police had made more than 30 low-profile attempts over more than a year to arrest Chan and that the officers had not known before her arrest that she was an Occupy Central activist. He also said that officers had contacted Chan to say she would be arrested and charged, but she declined to go to the police station.

Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, a core organiser of the movement, dismissed Tsang’s claim. "Miss Chan was arrested in a public area. That's not low-profile," Chu said. "If the warrant was issued last year, it's impossible she travelled out of Hong Kong."

Chan covered Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying's official visit to Beijing in April last year as a journalist and also travelled to Sweden in August but encountered no problems leaving and entering Hong Kong on both trips.

27 pan-democratic lawmakers issued a joint statement yesterday in defence of Chan, accusing the government of "political persecution and selective prosecuting", which they feared would jeopardise Hong Kong's freedom and the rule of law.

Civic Party leader and lawmaker Alan Leong Kah-kit questioned the intentions of the police, claiming that the arrest, which occurred when Chan was on her way to a volunteers’ meeting of the Occupy Central movement, was to create “white terror”. People Power legislator Albert Chan Wai-yip also said the arrest of Chan is a clear case of political persecution.