Winnie Yu Wai-Ming

Bio:

Winnie Yu is a registered nurse by profession and the former chairperson of the Hospital Authority Employee Alliance (HAEA). She volunteered as a paramedic at protest sites during the 2014 Umbrella Movement and 2019 Democracy Movement. She helped found the HAEA that represents more than 20,000 HA staffs and became the first chairperson of the union. Amid the COVID-19 outbreak in January 2020, the HAEA staged a 5-day strike from 3 to 7 February, with an estimated 6,000 strong medical workers taking part, demanding adequate personal protective equipment for HA staff and border closures to stop the virus spreading to the city. [1]

Yu won the democracy camp’s primaries in the Health Services functional constituency. She was arrested on 6 January 2021 on suspicion of conspiracy to commit subversion and was denied bail after a four-day marathon trial starting on 1 March. The High Court allowed her appeal for bail on 28 July, citing that there was no evidence that she “ever had an international connection”.[2] She was arrested again on suspicion of violating bail conditions on 7 March 2022 and her bail was revoked the next day by a magistrate, seemingly because of posts she made on social media criticising the government’s handling of the Omicron outbreak, which has left nearly 3,000 people dead (as of early March) and hospitals overwhelmed. [3]

[1]                https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnie_Yu_(nurse) [retrieved 16 May 2022]

[2]                https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3148756/national-security-law-hong-kong-judge-rules-subversion 

[3]                https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/hongkong-unionist-03102022105118.html