Contempt of court charges against student activists Joshua Wong Chi-fung and Lester Shum will not be withdrawn despite the Department of Justice failing to deliver legal documents in time, the High Court has rule.
Wong, convenor of the student activist group Scholarism, as well as Shum, former deputy head of the Hong Kong Federation of Students, were prominent figures in the pro-democracy Occupy movement in 2014.
Including Wong and Shum’s case, a total of twenty applicants were refused. The applicants had argued that – because the Department of Justice had failed to deliver legal documents to to them in time – the charges against them should be dropped.
However, Mr Justice Anderson Chow ruled that this “mere failure” was not enough to halt legal proceedings.
The court hearing for Joshua Wong began on February 29. He is charged, along with fellow student activists Nathan Law and Alex Chow, with two counts of inciting others to take part in an unlawful assembly and two counts participating in an unlawful assembly.
More requests denied
In a separate case, the High Court has also denied all requests from the Department of Justice for five media outlets to submit raw footage, along with the cameraman’s identities, of pro-democracy Civic Party member Ken Tsang Kin-chiu and seven policemen accused of assault on October 15, 2014.
Several media outlets including TVB and i-Cable had already denied the request. Previously, Judge Judianna Barnes Wai-ling also questioned the necessity of the evidence.
