Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal has ruled that the Hong Kong government’s decision last year to invoke the colonial-era Emergency Law to ban protesters from masking during protests was appropriate and legal.
The ruling on Monday (Dec. 21) was seen as a blow to pro-democracy advocates. They had previously hoped that the Court of Final Appeal would issue a ruling in line with the Hong Kong High Court, ruling that the No Masking Law was illegal.
AFP reported that the ruling by Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal confirmed that Beijing-appointed Hong Kong’s chief executive has the power to introduce any legal person in a state of emergency without the approval of Hong Kong’s partially elected Legislative Council, but the practical effect of the ruling is unclear, as the Hong Kong government now mandates the wearing of masks in public in response to the new coronavirus outbreak.
At one point, Hong Kong saw seven consecutive months of massive protest demonstrations, which at times featured scenes of violent clashes. Hong Kong authorities eventually suppressed the mass protests through mass arrests, a ban on public gatherings in the name of responding to the outbreak, and Beijing’s implementation of a new Hong Kong version of the National Security Law in Hong Kong in late June.
Protesters commonly wear masks to reduce the risk of being identified and monitored during mass peaceful protest demonstrations and during violent confrontations with police.
Last October, HKSAR Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor activated the Emergency Law, enacted by British colonial authorities in 1922, to ban people from wearing masks at public gatherings. Opposition lawmakers have questioned the HKSAR government’s use of the Emergency Law and the wearing of masks at police-sanctioned gatherings.
The grounds for their challenge were that the Hong Kong government’s move violated the Hong Kong Basic Law. The Hong Kong High Court agreed with the opposition’s challenge and expressed concern about whether such use of the Emergency Law and the ban on masking was excessive.
But on Monday, the five judges of the Court of Final Appeal ruled that the masking ban, while restricting freedom of assembly and expression as well as the right to privacy, balanced the legitimate restrictions on public safety, public order and the protection of the rights of others, the court found that the restrictions under the masking ban on unauthorized assemblies, public meetings and public processions met the requirement of proportionality and that the restrictions served the legitimate purpose of deterring peaceful public assemblies from turning violent and struck a fair balance between the interests of the community and the rights of the individual.
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