Lau Siu-lai

Lau Siu-lai (; born 3 August 1976) is a Hong Kong educator, academic, activist, and politician. She is a sociology lecturer at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University's Hong Kong Community College and the founder of Democracy Groundwork and Age of Resistance.

Background Lau holds a bachelor's degree in social science, a master of philosophy in sociology, and a PhD in cultural sociology and historical sociology from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She worked as a tutor at the Chinese University for a decade before joining the faculty of the Hong Kong Community College. In this role she earned the moniker "Teacher Siu-lai" . Lau has hawked food herself, as an act of civil disobedience, in support of hawkers. She has organised street markets in Mei Foo, Sham Shui Po and Wong Tai Sin to demonstrate that hawking can be conducted in an orderly manner. In response to the crackdown, localist group Hong Kong Indigenous called on supporters to come out on 8 February to help "protect" the hawkers and the night markets. The FEHD and police again took action against the markets, resulting in a major civil disturbance.

In response to her arrest, Lau said the government's stance was unreasonable, as hawking provides jobs, lowers the cost of living, and gives residents choice in the face of neighbourhoods dominated by corporate powers. Lau appeared at Kowloon City Magistrates' Court on 20 June 2016. Two officers from the FEHD testified that they saw Lau heat up squid with a frying pan and sell a man a skewer for HK$10.

Lau's educational career is under jeopardy due to her hawking-related activism. In mid-2016 the Hong Kong Polytechnic University launched a disciplinary hearing against her for "moonlighting" as she reportedly earned HK$10 selling snacks. Lau said that the university's actions were politically motivated, stating that senior figures at the institute had told her that the president was under pressure from the university's governing council to take action against her. Lau donated the $10 to her Democracy Groundwork and defended herself, stating that there was no conflict of interest, that hawking does not constitute formal employment, and that the ban on moonlighting applied only to full-time faculty (while she was a part-time lecturer at the time). She advocates a "very high" degree of autonomy for Hong Kong and the protection of local culture.

In addition to her above views on hawkers, Lau is critical of Link REIT, a private real estate company whose assets primarily comprise shopping centres, markets, and car parks in public housing estates. Link REIT exercises a de facto monopoly in many low-income areas, and has been subject to numerous protests due to rapid rent increases, eviction of local shops in favour of chain operators, and property management outsourcing. There have been calls for the government to buy back properties owned by the Link REIT, most of which were divested from the Housing Authority in 2005.

The election was held on 4 September 2016, with a total of 36 candidates standing on 15 party lists in the Kowloon West constituency. Standing alone on her list, Lau garnered 38,183 votes, the third highest at 13.69 percent of the total, and the best supported pro-democracy candidate. She is regarded as a member of the localist camp, and pledged to work together with other newly elected localists Eddie Chu and Nathan Law. She was asked to read it again, and she did so extremely slowly. Other pro-democratic and localist candidates similarly added extra phrases of protest to their oaths. Lau, despite protesting in a similar manner to Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung, did not appear to be targeted by the court order. Lau was finally sworn in on 2 November 2016 by Andrew Leung, despite the protests of pro-Beijing camp. The judge presiding over Yau and Leung's case ruled in favour of the government on 15 November 2016, disqualifying the duo and barring them from the legislature.

Jackson Kwan San-wai, who ran at the head of the Politihk Social Strategic list in the same constituency as Lau but lost, with his list (of two) gaining only 938 votes (0.34%), filed an election petition against Lau in November 2016 on the grounds that by her conduct during the swearing-in she did not uphold the Basic Law. Politihk Social Strategic is a group of pro-Beijing activists who opposed the 2014 pro-democratic protests. It was followed by the government launching a second legal action, against her and three other legislators, Leung Kwok-hung of the League of Social Democrats (LSD), Nathan Law of Demosisto and Yiu Chung-yim, on 2 December. The four members were eventually disqualified by the court on 14 July 2017.

Lau and Leung pursued a legal appeal against their disqualification, meaning that of the six seats left vacant by the removal of pro-democracy Legislative Councillors, only the other four were contested in the by-election of 11 March 2018. However, on 29 May 2018, Lau announced that she was retracting her appeal, given uncertainty from the court about whether it could be heard with Leung's, as well as the cost and high psychological pressure of the case, and the delay it would cause to the opportunity for the democratic camp to regain the seat in a by-election.

Kowloon West by-election 2018 and disqualification On 29 June 2018, Lau joined the Labour Party, and brought her Democracy Groundwork group on board the party also. She publicly discussed the possibility of running to regain her old seat, either with the Labour Party or independently.

Also in June, it was announced that the by-election for Lau's seat, the geographical constituency of Kowloon West, would take place on 25 November 2018. On 20 September, Lau became the first person to announce her candidacy in a bid to regain the seat. She was the candidate of the pro-democracy camp. On 12 October 2018, Lau was disqualified by the Electoral Affairs Commission. She was replaced by Lee Cheuk-yan, who was defeated by health ambassador and pro-Beijing Chan Hoi-yan on 25 November, causing the pro-democracy camp to lose its majority status in the geographical constituency part in the Legislative Council.