Jimmy Sham

Jimmy Sham Tsz-kit (born 29 June 1987) is a Hong Kong pro-democracy and LGBT rights activist.

Sham grew up in a single-parent family and completed secondary school in 2006.

He worked as a legislative assistant for a period after graduating from secondary school.

He later joined Rainbow Action, a member organisation of Civil Human Rights Front that advocates for LGBT rights.

He started assisting with CHRF's work in 2008, hosting events and managing affairs with human and police rights.

He occupied Connaught Road Central along with other protesters after the 1July march in 2011, after which he was arrested for unlawful assembly.

He participated in the 2014 Hong Kong protests and became CHRF's convener in 2015, for one year.

Sham is openly gay; he married his husband, a flight attendant, in New York in 2014.

He is an active campaigner for LGBT rights in Hong Kong.

As a secretary, he manages daily operations for Rainbow of Hong Kong, helps organise annual LGBT rallies and hosted an LGBT programme on Citizens' Radio.

After Sham left the post of convener, he studied at the Hong Kong Community College, graduating in October 2018 with a higher diploma in social work.

He immediately rejoined CHRF, again as convener.

This came at a difficult time for the organisation, as it had only HK$300,000 in funding with a monthly expenditure of HK$20,000.

He is a longtime member of the League of Social Democrats and joined its executive committee in 2018.

He first joined the party because it was the first in Hong Kong to include LGBT issues in its platform.

Sham was also the spokesperson for the 2018 Hong Kong Pride Parade, which drew 12,000 people, a record high.

Sham has resorted to the courts to have his New York marriage recognised in Hong Kong.

In 2019 he was elected to the Sha Tin District Council by residents of Lek Yuen constituency, but he resigned from this position in July 2021 amidst a government crackdown on pro-democracy councillors.

As convener of Civil Human Rights Front, Sham helped organise the first and second protest marches against the 2019 Hong Kong extradition bill on 31 March and 28 April, and helped organise the protest march against the bill on 9June.

The number of participants at this march exceeded his expectations: CHRF set a target of 300,000 protesters, and he estimated that more than a million people participated.

On 13 June, after the Hong Kong government's announcement of its intention to restart debating the bill, as well as the clashes at the Legislative Council (LegCo), Sham decided to organize another protest march on 16 June, which meant they had only four days to advertise it.

He estimated that there were close to two million participants at the 16 June protest.

Sham noted that CHRF is unable to mobilise large numbers of people to participate in protests, and that the high number of protesters in the 2019 protests was caused by public awareness and poor governance by the Hong Kong government.

He described CHRF's role in the protests as providing a platform for citizens to express their views.

He said that CHRF estimates participants at protests by counting the participants from footbridges.

Sham organised the 1July march in 2019, demanding a full retraction of the amendment bill and for Chief Executive Carrie Lam to step down.

Sham was elected to the Sha Tin District Council during the 2019 District Council elections.

He represents the pro-democracy League of Social Democrats in Lek Yuen constituency.

His campaign activities were temporarily disrupted by the October 2019 attack, but he returned to the streets to campaign on crutches.

Sham was elected on 24 November 2019, unseating incumbent Michael Wong Yue-hon of the pro-Beijing Civil Force.

He served as a convener for the pro-democracy organisation Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF) until October 2020 and serves as a secretary for the LGBT rights organisation Rainbow of Hong Kong.

He is a longtime member of the League of Social Democrats.

In 2020, Time magazine named Sham one of "20 people to watch", the only Hong Kong citizen on the list.

He responded, "Hong Kong people deserve more attention from the outside world than themselves."

In September 2020, he lost his first judicial review, and lost the case before the Court of Appeal in August 2022, while awaiting trial over the mass national security law case.

On 11 November 2022, Sham's lawyer Hectar Pun resorted to the High Court as a last resort for his petition to be heard, after a panel of three judges determined that the matter was of "great general public importance".

In September 2023, the Court of Final Appeal rejected Sham's appeal for recognition of same-sex marriage.

However, the Court ordered the government to work on a framework of recognition within two years from the moment of the appeal.

Sham ran as a candidate of the League of Social Democrats for Kowloon West during the pro-democracy primaries of July 2020 and won the election with 24,144 votes, 31.82% of the electorate.

On 30 July 2020, 12 candidates were disqualified by the Hong Kong government, and it was also announced that the rest of the candidacies were still being reviewed, with some saying that most of the pro-democracy camp were to be disqualified.