3 Hong Kong activists plead guilty to unauthorized assembly

Hong Kong activists Joshua Wong, Ivan Lam and Agnes Chow on Monday pleaded guilty over their roles in inciting others to take part in an unauthorized assembly and besieging police headquarters for 15 hours during a demonstration on June 21 last year.

Lam and Chow confessed to one more charge of organizing and taking part in the unauthorized gathering.

The three are key leaders of political groups advocating "Hong Kong independence," and have all been charged for similar reasons multiple times.

Starting June last year, protests and sometimes riots sparked by a later-defunct fugitive bill plunged the city into a state of complete chaos. According to the Hong Kong government's official estimate in November 2019, a total of 10.5 million Hong Kong dollars were spent to fix or replace public facilities damaged by radical protesters.

Late last year, Wong, 24, was disqualified from running in the since-postponed election for Hong Kong's legislature for his continuous challenging of the bottom line of the "One Country, Two Systems" principle and "undermining the city's prosperity and stability."