A former district councillor has been jailed for five weeks for posting an image of a kitchen knife on social media threatening to injure illegal gamblers in a Hong Kong neighbourhood.

Ben Ho Wai-pan, 32, returned to Tuen Mun Court on Tuesday to be sentenced on a count of attempted criminal intimidation stemming from a Facebook post on March 21, 2020.

The former member of Yuen Long District Council declared that he would start a “clearance operation” targeting street gamblers who assembled in Tin Yiu Estate in Tin Shui Wai, saying the noise they created had caused a public nuisance.

Ben Ho was sentenced on a count of attempted criminal intimidation at Tuen Mun Court on Tuesday.

He said he was “very much in a dilemma” as efforts to get police and security officers of the housing complex to address the problem had been met with tepid responses.

He claimed he would carry anything such as rods, knives or saws to the March 23 operation outside a residential block to “give the old folks a stern telling off, fence off the area” and “sweep and mop the ground”, with an image of a kitchen knife attached to the text.

“If any of your family members are going to sit out there to play card games, give them a reminder so they know what to do … Mind your own safety and keep yourself out of this,” the former politician added.

Ho resigned hours after his arrest last July, but did not detail his reasons.

Now a human resources manager, the defendant testified in last December’s trial that he was under immense pressure at the time and was thinking of hurting himself with the blade.

But in last month’s verdict, Magistrate Jeffrey Sze Cho-yiu found that claim illogical, saying the unequivocal wording of the post and his decision to publish the text on his public account showed his clear intention to alarm others.

On Tuesday, Sze refused to spare the defendant jail, saying he had insisted on his “unreasonable defence” and showed no remorse during his meeting with the probation officer.

Ho has been charged in a separate case with inciting others to injure national security police officers in another Facebook post in May 2020, in breach of a court injunction that banned anyone from posting or spreading messages online that could incite violence amid the social unrest of the previous year.

He has pleaded guilty to a contempt of court charge and will be sentenced in the High Court on February 28.