Programmer jailed six months for publishing seditious remarks on LIHKG

A 34-year-old autistic programmer deserves his six months' imprisonment for publishing seditious remarks on forum LIHKG, a judge said Tuesday as he stressed the online remarks calling on an armed revolution were most definitely not “jokes.” 

Luk Ting-fung, who previously worked for the Inland Revenue Department, appeared before chief magistrate So Wai-tak, also a designated national security judge, at West Kowoloon Magistrates' Courts today. 

Luk had earlier pleaded guilty to doing an act and acts with seditious intention for publishing eight posts and leaving 21 comments with seditious intent on LIHKG between January 13, 2020, and August 1 this year. 

Luk in the online remarks expressed his wish for an armed revolution that involved “rocket launchers at the very least.” He also categorized people with different political stands and proposed that people who support the SAR government and China should be executed and suffer from “lingchi” – a slow and painful death by a thousand cuts adopted in ancient China. 

When passing the sentence, judge So said although Luk suffered from autistic spectrum disorder and was not good at socializing with people, he could tell Luk had an anti-government view and made the online remarks with a clear mind. 

Judge So continued that Luk had been promoting an armed revolution and demanding executions of principal government officials. He viewed people with different political stands as enemies and encouraged others to waste police's time. He was not making jokes at the time, So also added. 

So went on to say that after being promoted, Luk published more remarks to slander the government targeting the requirement on asking civil servant to pledge allegiance to the SAR. 

Although the remarks didn't lead to any violent event or damage the society, Luk should have thought more about his family before he published those remarks. The situation Luk got himself into was well-deserved, So said before he started the sentence at nine months and discounted it by one-third. 

In mitigation, the defense said Luk finally found a stable full-time job four years after graduating from university. He was only seeking netizens' recognition on LIHKG and didn't commit the seditious acts intentionally. 

He learned a valuable lesson on being careful with his words and wanted the court to give him a second chance.