Hong Kong activist Agnes Chow, 24, was released from prison Friday where she has spent the last seven months after being involved in a pro-Democracy protest in 2019 labeled as an “unauthorized assembly during anti-government protests.
Supporters were there to cheer her on as she left the Tai Lam Correctional Institution at about 10 a.m. She was quickly rushed into a car and made no public statements, Reuters reported.
In an Instagram post later she thanked her followers for braving the rain to meet her.
“The painful half year and 20 days, it’s finally over,” the 24-year-old said.
Chow was convicted along with her collaborator Joshua Wong for participating in pro-democracy demonstrations on the island in the months just before the pandemic.
Wong remains incarcerated.
A former British colony, Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997. Its people — long accustomed to western rights and freedoms — have existed in an uneasy relationship with the ruling mainland ever since under an arrangement known as “One Country, Two Systems”
Clashes with the population have become increasingly frequent since 2014 as China has moved to tighten its controls over free speech and squelch out the rule of law on the island.
