Japanese public opinion is highly concerned about the release of Chou Ting

Chow Ting, internationally known as the “Goddess of Democracy in Hong Kong,” was released from prison on the 12th after completing her sentence. The release of Chow Ting, who was sentenced to 10 months in prison for the siege of police headquarters on June 21 of the previous year, received a great deal of attention from the Japanese media, with more than 20 media outlets vying to report on Chow Ting’s release from prison.

Kyodo News reported that Zhou Ting, a pro-democracy activist who was sentenced to 10 months in prison last December for unauthorized fan rallies around the June 2019 siege of Hong Kong police headquarters, had her sentence shortened because she was a model prisoner, and that she was arrested and released on bail last August on suspicion of violating Hong Kong’s national security laws, and could still be charged with violating national security laws in the future, according to sources. She is still at risk of being charged with violating national security laws.

Chow started social activism at the age of 15 and worked as a publicist with the foreign media during the 2014 Umbrella Movement, an anti-government demonstration calling for universal suffrage, before taking up a position with the youth-focused pro-democracy political organization Hong Kong People’s Political Union, which was founded in 2016 and disbanded at the end of June. “(disbanded at the end of June last year), and was named one of the BBC’s “100 Women of 2020” in November last year.

She likes Japanese anime and idols, taught herself Japanese through Japanese anime, and posts her own messages in Japanese through Twitter, and has 470,000 Japanese followers. She has communicated the status of the pro-democracy movement and the arrest of activists in Hong Kong in fluent Japanese through YouTube and Twitter, and is very popular in Japan. The arrest of Chow Ting last August was also mostly headlined in the Japanese media and became a major topic of conversation on social media, while other celebrities arrested on suspicion of violating the Hong Kong National Security Law (“NSL”) have far less of a presence in Japan than Chow Ting.

In an interview with the Asahi Shimbun in 2019, she said, “Hong Kong is my home,” the Asahi Shimbun reported. I want to continue the democratization movement with the sense of responsibility and pride of being a Hong Konger.” In 2019, he came to Japan and held a press conference at the Japan Press Club, where she said, “If the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance is amended, Hong Kong will become China.”