JOYCE NG JOYCE.NG@SCMP.COM
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 04 August, 2015, 6:47pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 04 August, 2015, 7:37pm
A group of Beijing-loyalist lawyers have urged Hong Kong’s Department of Justice to prosecute protesters and internet users said to have made threats against a judge who jailed a demonstrator for assaulting a police officer with her breast.
Possible criminal charges against those people included contempt of court, attempt to pervert the course of justice and criminal intimidation, the CA Legal Exchange Foundation said in a letter submitted to the department today.
“To intimidate a judge and try to influence him in sentencing is a very serious matter,” lawmaker Dr Priscilla Leung Mei-fun, a consultant to the foundation, said in the afternoon. “It sets alarm bells ringing over our rule of law.”
The foundation also cited local and overseas cases in the letter to support its call.
On July 30, Deputy Magistrate Michael Chan Pik-kiu, of Tuen Mun Court, expressed fears for his safety during the sentencing of a woman to 3½ months in jail for bumping her breast against a police chief inspector at an anti-parallel-goods trading protest in Yuen Long in March.
Chan claimed to have received threats after his conviction of Ng Lai-ying, 30, a month earlier.
The day after, Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung said his department was working with police and would consider launching judicial proceedings if there was sufficient evidence.
The foundation highlighted a post allegedly posted on the Facebook page of Passion Times, the website of radical democracy group Civic Passion.
That post contained a graphic of Chan within the cross hairs of a gun, accompanied by the words: “Words are useless. Actions count!”
Wong Yeung-tat, political activist and chief editor of Passion Times, would not say whether the post originated from its website, but called on people to focus on the injustice Lai faced.
http://m.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-crime/article/1846483/beijing-loyalist-lawyers-call-criminal-charges-against
