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HONG KONG: Hong Kong prison staff made a mistake when cutting the hair of a dissident veteran known for his long locks, the city’s highest court said on Friday (November 27), in the second major ruling against authorities. this month.
The decision comes as powerful establishment voices demand reform of the judiciary, something opponents fear could muffle the much-acclaimed independence of Hong Kong’s legal system as Beijing cracks down on critics.
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Friday’s ruling by the Final Court of Appeals is the culmination of a long legal battle by Leung Kwok-hung, 64, who served a brief jail sentence in 2014 related to his protest.
Better known by the nickname “long hair,” he is one of the city’s best-known dissidents, beginning his career campaigning against British colonial rule and later becoming a fierce critic of Beijing.
A panel of high-level judges, including Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma, unanimously ruled that Leung’s rights had been violated under sex discrimination laws when they cut his hair in prison.
Hong Kong prison authorities insist that all male prisoners keep their hair short, but female inmates are allowed to keep their hair long if they wish.
“The fact that male prisoners are denied the possibility of choosing their hair length suggests that they are treated less favorably than female prisoners,” the judges wrote, adding that authorities had not explained why it was required. short hair for custody discipline.
The decision comes at a delicate time for the Hong Kong legal system.
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Unlike the judiciary controlled by China’s authoritarian party, the city maintains an independent common law system that forms the basis of its success as a global commercial and financial center.
But two major pro-Beijing newspapers in the city, and a group of pro-government politicians, have started calling for reforms to the judiciary.
Earlier this month, those calls were backed by a speech by Zhang Xiaoming, a senior Chinese official responsible for the central government’s policies toward Hong Kong.
Beijing loyalists have been outraged by recent acquittals of some protesters, often by judges with harsh words to say about police behavior and evidence gathering, and judicial reviews that have gone against the government.
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Last week, a High Court judge convicted the police in a case related to the huge and often violent pro-democracy protests last year.
The ruling, which can still be appealed, determined that the agents made a mistake in hiding their identification cards and that the city’s watchdog has been “inadequate” to investigate the complaints against the agents.
The staunch pro-Beijing newspaper Ta Kung Pao published a scathing report on the ruling under the headline “Government of thugs, no human rights for policemen.”
That article prompted a call from the influential Bar Association for the government to openly defend the independence of the judiciary.
