Localist icon Edward Leung Tin-kei will have his Facebook page shut down at midnight on Wednesday, hours before his release from prison on Wednesday, according to his family.

The main purpose of the page was to engage in fundraising and help send letters from the public to Leung during his years behind bars.

The decision would be made following legal advice and all content will be removed.

The family also told Leung supporters that they did not need to “take a long trip to Shek Pik” to welcome his release.

“Please let Tin-kei go home as soon as possible,” the family wrote on Leung’s Facebook page. “Please put your own safety first.”

“In the past, the volunteers who run this page have collected all of your thoughts and wishes and conveyed them to Tin-kei,” the post read. “Now we are about to complete our historic mission.”

Leung, now 30, is set to be released from prison tomorrow (January 19) after serving his six-year sentence for rioting in Mong Kong during the Lunar New Year holiday in 2016.

The former spokesperson for the localist group, Hong Kong Indigenous, was jailed in June 2018 by the High Court after being found guilty of rioting during the so-called ‘Fishball Revolution’ in Mong Kok on the first night of New Year’s Eve. Lunar year in February 2016.

He had also pleaded guilty to assaulting a police officer, for which he was sentenced to 12 months but to serve concurrently.

It is understood that Leung, who is listed as a Category A prisoner for those who would pose the greatest threat to the public, is serving his sentence at Shek Pik Prison on Lantau Island.

Given Leung’s sensitive identity, it is expected that there will be a large crowd and media covering his release, and authorities are considering plans such as allowing him to leave prison on his own or deploy a special car to take him away.

In 2015, Leung joined Hong Kong Indigenous, founded by self-exiled activist Ray Wong Toi-yeung and participated in the Eastern New Territories by-election in February the following year (2016), with the election slogan “Free Hong Kong; revolution of our time,” a phrase frequently used by protesters during protests against the anti-fugitive bill in 2019.

But he lost the by-election to now remanded lawyer Alvin Yeung Ngok-kiu after winning just 66,524 votes.

Leung then stood for election to the Legislative Council in September 2016, but was disqualified by the returning officer, who said she did not believe Leung had genuinely changed her previous stance in favor of independence.

Leung received her bachelor’s degree in philosophy with a minor in politics and public administration from the University of Hong Kong in 2017.