CCAC | No promise of immunity from prosecution given to Sing Fong protesters

The Commission Against Corruption (CCAC) stated yesterday that it had found no evidence to suggest that government officials pledged not to prosecute Sin Fong Garden proprietors who clashed with police authorities during a protest last year.
The New Macau Association raised doubts over the impartiality of Macau’s judiciary system and filed a complaint with CCAC last month, urging the city’s anti-graft agency to investigate the case.
A group of seven Sin Fong Garden proprietors have been accused of aggravated disobedience by the Public Prosecutions Office (MP). Some apartment owners had accused the government of breaking its promise to not prosecute them over last year’s demonstration.
However, CCAC stated that, in the course of its investigation, representatives of Sin Fong Garden owners, along with those who have been prosecuted for occupying the public road, stated that they had never heard government officials promising not to prosecute them. CCAC said that members of the inter-departmental group that was set up by the authorities to deal with the Sin Fong Garden case also stated that they had never heard such a promise.
Moreover, CCAC recalled that Sin Fong Garden residents staged two protests last year. During the second one, which started on the night of April 10, the police started to clear up the site at around 1 a.m. and arrested seven proprietors. “The protesters had already withdrawn from the public road they occupied at that time, and most of them had left when the police took action (…) traffic conditions returned to normal quickly afterward. Therefore, the statement that, ‘some government officials requested the proprietors to withdraw from the public road by pledging to not prosecute them [if they did so]’ is not reasonable,” CCAC said.
Since CCAC did not find evidence to suggest that government officials had pledged not to prosecute the owners, the agency decided to shelve the case.
Separately, Sin Fong proprietors were asked to reach a consensus as soon as possible in order to secure the Macao Jiangmen Communal Society’s funding of the building’s reconstruction, said the group’s vice president Chan Pou Sam, adding that the society is considering setting a deadline for the owners’ unanimous decision. The block’s reconstruction is one signature away from realization, as one street shop owner still refuses to ink the agreement, which has collected all other proprietors’ signatures. Chan stressed that their plan was not intended to exert pressure on the flat owners, but yet his group would bear certain pressure under the rising architectural costs. He also added that the society’s generous pledge to finance 60 percent of the reconstruction might become invalid if an agreement is not met before the deadline.