Authorities Said a Protester Assaulted Hong Kong Police. Witness Video Showed Otherwise · Global Voices
Oiwan Lam

Citizens monitor police use of force with their cameras. Photo taken by Gundam Lam for inmediahk.net. Used with permission.
Police arrested 1,003 people, including protesters, reporters and medics, who participated or were in the area of the massive Occupy Central sit-in between September 28, 2014 and December 15, 2014 in Hong Kong's Admiralty, Causeway Bay and Mong Kok. Among those arrested, more than 100 were prosecuted. The majority of cases are headed for prosecution.
Thanks to the watchful eye of ordinary citizens who bore witness to the “crime scene”, a number of cases have been acquitted.
One such case is that of 17-year-old student protester Ho Pak-Hei. On April 2, he was acquitted of assaulting a police officer in Mong Kok in November because a retired couple appeared in court and presented a video that showed the student did not touch any police officer.
W.B. Yeung, from an organization called the Progressive Lawyers Group, recounted Ho's story for non-profit online media the Stand News, and Jason Li turned the post into a comic (republished here with his permission):
The protests, dubbed the Umbrella Revolution or Umbrella Movement by the media, sought to pressure the Beijing government to allow Hong Kong citizens the right to nominate candidates for the city's top leader, called the chief executive. Hong Kong, a special administrative region of mainland China, will vote for the chief executive for the first time in its history in 2017.
Though Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen stressed that decisions to prosecute were free from political considerations and would be made in accordance with the penal code and the evidence available, several cases have indicated otherwise. Below are a few examples thus far:
As W.B Yeung concluded in his article “The Courage of Ordinary People, and Its Opposite” about Ho Pak-Hei's acquittal:
Ho’s acquittal and the acts of the elderly couple gave us an opportunity to celebrate the courage of ordinary people. One day, we also hope to celebrate the courage of those in positions of power to admit their mistakes.
Follow our in-depth coverage: Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution