page_title: Leung Kwok-hung
section_title: Early life and social activism
hierarchical_section_title: Leung Kwok-hung / Early life and social activism
caption_attribution_description: English: Members of April Fifth Action in Victoria Park, Hong Kong in 2009 to commemorate the victims in the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
context_page_description: Leung Kwok-hung, also known as "Long Hair", is a Hong Kong politician and social activist. He was a member of the Legislative Council, representing the New Territories East. Being a Trotskyist in his youth, he was the founding member of the Revolutionary Marxist League. He became a political icon with his long hair and Che Guevara T-shirt in the protests before he was elected to the Legislative Council in 2004. In 2006, he co-founded a social democratic party, the League of Social Democrats of which he was the chairman from 2012 to 2016.
  In 2017, he announced his candidacy for the 2017 Chief Executive election, through unofficial public petition, but withdrew after failing to receive enough signatures. On 14 July 2017, Leung was disqualified by the court over his manner on oath of office at the inaugural meeting of the Legislative Council on 12 October 2016 as a result of the oath-taking controversy.
context_section_description: Leung was born on 27 March 1956 in Hong Kong to an immigrant family from the Guangdong Province. Born in Shau Kei Wan, he later moved into Chai Wan Estate. He was raised in a single family after his father left home when Leung was 6 years old, while his mother was an amah in a British family to support the family and Leung had to live with relatives back in Shau Kei Wan who had seven children.
  Leung was educated at the Clementi Secondary School. Leung credits his political awakening to the Cultural Revolution and the 1967 Hong Kong riots, participating in the "Maoist student movement". He and his mother were members of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (HKFTU), the left-wing pro-communist labour union at the time. After the falls of Lin Biao and the Gang of Four which crushed the Maoist idealism, Leung reflected his political belief, and delved himself into Trotskyism under the influence of the social activist icons at that time such as Ng Chung-yin.
  In 1975, he co-founded the Revolutionary Marxist League, a Trotskyist vanguard party, in which he became active in political actions. He was arrested multiple times, including in the protests of supporting the 1976 April Fifth Tiananmen Incident and Chinese democracy movement. His first prosecution was in 1979 when he protested for the Yau Ma Tei boat people. Later in the same year he was charged and jailed for a month for "unlawful assembly" for a protest at the Victoria Park.
  After his release, he worked as a construction worker from 1981 to 1986. In 1986, Leung worked for Kowloon Motor Bus as an overnight vehicle cleaner. Around 1988, he formed the April Fifth Action after the Revolutionary Marxist League was disbanded. The group is well known for its aggressive and civil disobedience-style actions to protest against the governments of China and Hong Kong during celebrations and visits of state leaders, often resulting in confrontations with the Hong Kong police. They usually carry a coffin as their trademark protest prop. Leung supported the Tiananmen protest of 1989 and has been member of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements in China.
  He has been briefly jailed several times for offences such as shouting from Legislative Council of Hong Kong (LegCo) public viewing gallery, burning the national flag of the People's Republic of China and forcibly breaking into an opposition political event. In 2000, he and Koo Sze-yiu were prosecuted for disrupting a LegCo meeting and were later jailed for 14 days, becoming the first dissents to be jailed after the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. Before that he had been charged for 14 times, 11 of which were convicted.
caption: Members of the April Fifth Action in Victoria Park, Hong Kong in 2009 to commemorate the victims in the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
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