The HKJA challenged the police for obstructing interviews and using excessive force, but the Hong Kong High Court rejected its application for review.
The Hong Kong Journalists Association earlier failed to cooperate with the police, and even obstructed media interviews, to the High Court to apply for judicial review. Judge Chow Ka-ming on Monday (21) issued a ruling, ruling that the Association lost the case.
The case was heard in the High Court in April this year. The HKJA said that the freedom of the press is protected by Article 27 of the Basic Law, describing the police as having obstructed the journalists’ work by shining a bright light on their filming tools and using foul language to insult them. The Police Commissioner and the Attorney General said that freedom of the press is subject to the same restrictions as other fundamental rights, and that journalists are not immune from criminal liability solely on the basis of their status as journalists.
The HKJA is extremely disappointed with the High Court’s ruling against it, and will study the judgment with its legal team to decide the next step.
The HKJA said that although the court did not rule on whether the police had violated the Human Rights Act and the Basic Law in this ruling, the judge had ruled earlier in the same case that police officers had failed to display unique police numbers and that the existing police complaint mechanism violated the Human Rights Act, and that the existing police complaint mechanism was fundamentally flawed.
The HKJA said that it is a hard fact that the police have been obstructing journalists and using unnecessary and excessive force during the anti-censorship campaign. The public can judge for themselves whether the police obstructed interviews and used excessive force against journalists from a large number of videos and photos.
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