Lee Cheuk-yan


Lee Cheuk-yan is a Hong Kong politician and social activist. He was a member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong from 1995 to 2016, when he lost his seat. He represented the Kowloon West and the Manufacturing constituencies briefly in 1995 and had been representing the New Territories West constituency from 1998 to 2016. He is a trade union leader and General Secretary of the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, as well as former chairman of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China.

Background

Lee's ancestral home is at Chaoyang, Guangdong. Lee emigrated from Mainland China to Hong Kong in 1959. He graduated from the University of Hong Kong with a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in 1978. Since his university days, he has been a labour and pro-democracy activist.
During the student-led Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he collected donations from the Concert for Democracy in China in Hong Kong and travelled to Beijing to hand over the funds to student protesters in Tiananmen Square. He was detained by the authorities there and made to sign a confession letter before being allowed to return to Hong Kong. Since the events of 1989, Lee has remained a standing committee member of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China which promotes democratic reform in China.

Legislative Councillor

In 1995, Lee was elected unopposed in a by-election of the Legislative Council, replacing Lau Chin-shek, who had resigned. He has since been re-elected four times, continuously serving as a lawmaker, except for a brief period during 1997 and 1998, when the sovereignty of Hong Kong was transferred to the People's Republic of China, and the Legislative Council temporarily became a Provisional Legislative Council, composed of Beijing nominees.

Labour Party

In December 2011, he and three other Legislative Councillors Fernando Cheung, Cyd Ho and Cheung Kwok-che co-founded the Labour Party, becoming the third largest pan-democratic parties in the legislature. He served as chairman until December 2015 when he stepped down to give way to the younger party members and took the vice-chairmanship.
He received an unexpected loss in the 2016 Legislative Council election, departing the legislature after more than 20 years of service.

Family

He is married to Elizabeth Tang, the chairperson of the Hong Kong People's Alliance on WTO. They have one daughter.

Arrests

On 28 February 2020, Lee was arrested for his involvement in a pro-democracy march on 31 August 2019, which was part of the protests sparked by the extradition bill and had been classified by police as illegal assembly. A few hours later, he was released on bail, as were the other arrestees Jimmy Lai and Yeung Sum. The cases were scheduled to be heard at Eastern Law Court on 5 May 2020.
On 18 April, Lee was one of the 15 Hong Kong high-profile democracy figures arrested on suspicion of organizing, publicizing or taking part in several unauthorized assemblies between August and October 2019 during the anti-extradition bill protests.