HONG KONG - The Court of Appeal on Wednesday dismissed an appeal by local activist Edward Leung Tin-kei, who is serving a six-year jail term for his role in the 2016 Mong Kok riot.

Leung, 28, was sentenced to prison in 2018 for rioting and assaulting a police officer during the riot. Later, he filed an appeal of the sentence with two other defendants in the case.

Explaining their decision, Chief Judge of the High Court of Hong Kong Jeremy Poon Shiu-chor, Justices of the Court of Appeal Carlye Chu Fun-ling and Derek Pang Wai-cheong, defended the jail sentence given to Leung, saying that it was “reasonable”.

READ MORE: Seeds for Mong Kok riot sown years ago in HK

The judges also disputed the defendants’ argument that the riot was not premeditated. Participants in the riots showed a degree of premeditation in committing the crime when they attacked unarmed police officers with serious violence, they said.

Chief Judge of the High Court of Hong Kong Jeremy Poon said the riot in which Edward Leung was involved was not a single incident, but a continuation of earlier riots

Even if Leung pleads that he had intended to “protect the native culture” of Hong Kong, this could not be used as a mitigating factor, the court said.

Poon also noted that the riot in which Leung was involved was not a single incident, but a continuation of earlier riots. He added that Leung had always been at the scene of these riots -- from the very beginning.

Prosecutor David Leung Cheuk-yin, director of Public Prosecutions, said that in sentencing someone for a rioting offense, the court should also consider the degree and scale of the overall violence. In this case, these two factors had reached a “serious” level, Leung explained.

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About 130 people, mostly police officers, were injured in the Mong Kok riot, which took place on Feb 8-9, 2016. Masked protesters were seen tossing bricks and setting trash cans alight at the scene.

Citing a one-hour video clip as evidence, the prosecutor said the riot was premeditated, as the clip showed weapons used by rioters, such as shields, were not randomly picked up from the streets. 

The court also refused permission to appeal by Lo Kin-man and Wong Ka-kui, two other defendants in the case. They were, respectively, sentenced to seven years and three-and-a-half years in prison for their roles in the riot.