The Police Narcotics Bureau recently launched enforcement operations in Yuen Long, North Point and Western District respectively, and seized a total of 154 kilograms of different types of drugs, including 96 kilograms of cocaine, 34 kilograms of ketamine, and 25 kilograms of marijuana, with a market value of about HK$125 million.
Continue reading Hong Kong police crack down on HK$125 million drug-related maid arrested
I am a Hong Kong citizen. I want to share my story about why I am in Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre waiting in custody to get a sentence.
I hope when you read this letter you take the time to reflect on how important is your life, friends, family, and all the things that freedom offers. And even if you are having some difficulty finding a job or a good way to earn a living in these COVID-19 times, never choose any wrongdoing. Never choose to deal with drugs because certainly, you will end up in jail for a very long and sad time.
Trust me. Being in jail is the worst experience. This is so bad that just in the last ten months I saw how two people preferred to take their lives and finish this sad moment.
I am a 29-year-old Hongkonger, currently held in custody at the Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre under drug trafficking charges. This is my story.
My father is from Hong Kong and my mother is from mainland China. She gave birth to me in Hong Kong while overstaying her visa. They divorced when I was little, and my father now has another family.
It all started when I met a man at Taboo – a bar located in Wanchai. The man has dark skin and calls himself Mapan, from America. I had known him for one month only.
On one Sunday night, which was my last encounter with him, he offered to pay for my drink and gave me HKD1000 to pay for food and a taxi to get home since it was already late at night and the MTR had closed. I originally wanted to go home earlier but he told me to stay, that’s why he gave me money to go home. I arrived home around 3 am that night.
I am 39 years old. I was arrested on January 30, 2021, for trafficking in dangerous drugs, and I am currently detained in Lai Chi Kok Reception Centre.
In December 2016 I was arrested and sentenced to five years and eight months for trafficking dangerous drugs and was released from prison on January 12, 2019. A month after my release, I got a job as a porter, but as fate would have it, I was injured at work three months later and couldn’t work anymore, so I had to rely on the compensation to make ends meet. Continue reading My life in pieces
I was arrested for burglary, and I am now remanded in prison. I have been arrested several times, for taking drugs, robbery, and burglary and have been in and out of prison for years.
For 20 years I had a meth addiction, and I committed most crimes after I took the drug.
I was an estate agent in my 20s. After several years of hard work, I developed a successful career, earning millions annually. But at the peak of my career, I was persuaded by bad friends and went down the wrong path of drugs. Not only did I put my career on the line, but I was also arrested for drug possession.
It’s been fifteen months since I was remanded in custody at the Lo Wu Correctional Institution. Back in March 2020, I was working as a part-time waitress and managing my online purchasing business at the time. Due to the social events and COVID-19 pandemic, my workload and income drastically reduced. I felt financially insecure.
One day, I was wandering around Mong Kok and bumped into a friend which we haven’t contacted for ages. We chatted for a while and updated each other with our latest status. He mentioned that he could hook me up to earn some quick cash.
How often have tears of relief woken us from our nightmares, and our visions relax while leftover anxiety gradually fades into a new day
And then there are those who wake into a nightmare every day, years and years on end: those of us who had forsaken God’s behest and challenged the law – and lost. We wake up in a cage too small for life, yet big enough to swallow our future in a blink of time. We are taken away from people who loved us until the moment they concede to reasons why leaving will be better off without us.
Customs seized 110 kilograms of suspected cocaine worth HK$130 million inside two hydraulic jacks – the largest airborne cocaine-trafficking case in two decades.
A 50-year-old secretary and a 51-year-old head of a construction firm, both male, were arrested for trafficking a dangerous drug in Tung Chung on Saturday.
A male passenger arrived in Hong Kong from Sao Paulo, Brazil via Amsterdam, the Netherlands yesterday. During Customs clearance, six personal hygiene product bottles containing the batch of suspected liquid cocaine were found inside his check-in suitcase. He was then arrested.
The arrested man, aged 30, has been charged with one count of trafficking in a dangerous drug.
Two South Asians – a Pakistani man who is a Hong Kong resident and a Bangladeshi man – have been arrested by police in Fan Ling when they seized 178 kilograms of illegal drugs worth HK$170 million in fruit juice cartons at a warehouse in On Lok Village.
This, the police said, is the largest drug haul this year.
The suspects will appear in the Fan Ling Magistrates’ Courts today
Police found 88 kilograms of ice, 82 kilograms of heroin, and eight kilograms of ketamine.
The Pakistani and the Bangladeshi are suspected to be involved with a transnational drug trafficking ring.
International drug couriers caught in Hong Kong last year continued to put their lives at risk by swallowing ever-larger quantities of cocaine pellets.
On average, “drug mules” arrested in the first 11 months of 2019 for smuggling ingested drugs were found with an average of 642 grams of cocaine inside them, up from 571 grams over the same period the previous year.
Low-level drug mules are convicted at a rate of more than one a day in Hong Kong’s High Court while only one gang organiser or senior syndicate member is sentenced every eight months, a study provided to Post Magazine shows.
An analysis by former deputy director of public prosecutions John Reading SC found that of 1,619 traffickers convicted from 2012 to 2015, only six were organisers or senior gang members, while 1,519 (or 93 percent) were couriers, apprehended either in Hong Kong or while trying to enter or leave the city. The remaining 94 cases mostly involved so-called storekeepers caught with drugs in Hong Kong.
Reading’s study also found that sentences for drug-trafficking offences were more severe in Hong Kong than in the 17 other jurisdictions surveyed, with a 22-year starting point for trafficking offences involving 1kg of a class-A drug compared with 20 years in Turkey, 15 to 20 years in Slovakia and 10 to 17 years in New York.
Hong Kong was the only jurisdiction surveyed, apart from Iceland and Austria, not to consider the role and seniority of the offender in the sentencing process. Hong Kong was also one of only six jurisdictions where previous good character was not recognised as a mitigating factor.
The average sentence over the four-year period in Hong Kong was nine years and nine months, while the highest sentences given out were to a 37-year-old sentenced to 32 years for trafficking 33.6kg of cocaine, and a 45-year-old sentenced to 33 years and six months for trafficking 11.9kg of cocaine and 410 grams of crystal methamphetamine.
Because 16-year-olds are tried in adult courts in Hong Kong, prosecutions over that period included 82 minors. All but two received substantial jail terms and cases included a 16-year-old sentenced to 17 years for trafficking 1.9kg of ketamine.
“The heavy sentences imposed for the offence in Hong Kong have not resulted in a significant reduction in drug trafficking cases over those years,” Reading concluded.
