Xen was a student at Leeds Conservatoire in January 2021 when he shared a Facebook event to a meme page, he says as a joke, proposing a snowball fight between Leeds’ two rival universities.
At the time, the UK was under a Covid lockdown - and the event would have broken Covid rules on meeting up and social distancing.
Hundreds of students went along to Hyde Park.
Not long afterwards, the police turned up at Xen’s house.
He was taken to a police station and questioned by officers, one of whom claimed that Xen was responsible for ‘over three thousand’ Covid deaths.
He was then fined £10,000. This was the maximum ‘fixed penalty fine’ that could be given out by the police for breaking lockdown rules.
Xen told The News Movement that it “took the police five minutes to decide to issue [me] a £10,000 fine” and they were “literally blaming me [...] for deaths.”
As a student, Xen didn’t have the money to pay the fine, “I don’t have the £10,000 to pay them” he said.
Almost half of all the Covid fines given out in England and Wales were to 18 to 24 year olds, despite the fact that they only make up 8 percent of the population.
Xen is currently appealing the fine. He made the point that other high profile people who broke the rules, like Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and former Prime Minister Boris Johnson were only fined £50 - “surely they should be paying more if anyone has to?”.
If Xen isn’t successful in his appeal, he’ll be forced to pay the fine by the courts. If he can’t pay, he risks having bailiffs sent to his house.
He says it’s caused him stress and anxiety - and he worries the fine might show up on job applications or when he travels abroad.
So does he regret it? “I probably wouldn’t jump to do it again. But am I ashamed that I did it? No… I wouldn’t say that” says Xen.
(📸: @ljfpics/X)