A Hong Kong teacher who lost her job at a government school over online comments about police during the 2019 protests has challenged the firing in court, arguing that it undermined her right to free speech.
Toffee Tam was granted permission by the High Court last October to lodge a judicial review to challenge the Civil Service Bureau, after she was fired from her job at a secondary school last July.
The bureau accused her of publishing Facebook posts between June and September 2019 that had negatively affected students and tarnished the government’s reputation.
Representing Tam at the High Court on Thursday, barrister Anson Wong quoted the maxim “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” a saying often used to describe freedom of speech.
Wong said Tam’s Facebook posts were not public and she did not have any students added as Facebook friends, Sing Tao reported. He added that free speech was important as it allowed people to express their emotions, preventing them from being channelled into violence.
Freedom of speech should only be restricted when necessary, Wong said.
Tam became a teacher in 1995, The Witness reported. She had been working at the Jockey Club Government Secondary School in Kowloon Tong since 2015.
Judicial reviews are considered by the Court of First Instance and examine the decision-making processes of administrative bodies. Issues under review must be shown to affect the wider public interest.
‘Corrupt cops’
Wong also went through the posts that Tam made over four years ago. He said the threshold for hate speech or inciting violence was high and the posts did not meet such a threshold.
He referred to one post reading “Corrupt cops, may your whole family die.” Wong said the phrase, in Cantonese, was just used to express anger and, in the same way that someone might say “Fuck you” in daily life, it was not meant to be taken literally.
The barrister mentioned another post Tam made in which she shared a video of a police officer falling over. Tam added, “Exactly what kind of training [do] they receive, how much money are [the police officers] paid?”
Wong said Tam was showing concern for whether public money was being spent properly.
Regarding another post in which Tam shared a video of undercover police arresting protesters and wrote “Petty people will stop at nothing to reach their aims,” Wong said her words reflected dissatisfaction with police enforcement strategies.
In the judicial review application, Tam wrote there was no evidence that she had made inappropriate remarks while teaching. Notes made by other teachers observing her lessons did not find that she had spoken in class about police in a derogatory manner, nor that she had talked about political topics such as the Tiananmen crackdown or protest marches.
Protests broke out in the summer of 2019 over a controversial extradition bill that would have allowed the transfer of criminal suspects to mainland China to stand trial. The demonstrations ballooned into wider opposition against the Hong Kong and Beijing authorities, as well as alleged police brutality in handling the protests.
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