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A five-minute primer on  an issue making headlines

A picture taken secretly of Twins star Gillian Chung Yan-tung in her bra and published by  Easy Finder magazine has been deemed indecent by the Obscene Articles Tribunal.

So who or what is the Obscene Articles Tribunal?

Basically, the tribunal is Hong Kong's censorship board, to which  publications are sent for classification. It classifies items under three categories: Class I is neither obscene nor indecent; Class II is indecent and cannot be sold to under 18s; and Class III is obscene and cannot be published.

How do they make those classifications? Is there a checklist of some kind?

No, the members of the tribunal do not glance through risque publications and tick off whether they can see too much cleavage. In fact, it is pretty much based on the members' instincts and own sense of morality. They are mostly members of the public who are considered to be able to reflect the public's general sense of outrage or acceptance.

How many members are there?

There is a pool of 300 members chosen by the chief justice. They are appointed for three years and can be reappointed. There is a presiding magistrate, Selwyn Hason Au See-hin. A team of at least three including the magistrate makes interim rulings. If a publication challenges the ruling, it has five working days to call for a full hearing, consisting of the magistrate  and four or more adjudicators, who confirm or review the interim ruling. Moves are afoot to double membership.

What rationale has been given for calling Chung's pictures indecent?  There was a picture of another woman, entirely naked apart from a pair of boots, on the same cover

The tribunal does not have to give reasons for  interim rulings. However, if a full hearing is carried out, it has to explain exactly why it decided a picture or movie or magazine is indecent or obscene.

Who are the members of the tribunal?

The names of members who make individual rulings are not normally disclosed. But after a court ruled in 1997 that the membership could not be secret, it released the names of the full pool of 300, who appear to be from a cross-section of  society, and include doctors, lawyers and businesspeople.

Can we trust them to gauge what is acceptable for the public to read and see?

That depends on whether you think Michelangelo's David statue is indecent, or if you are offended by the sight of a child burns victim. The tribunal has made some strikingly odd decisions, with some rulings made in 1995 being of particular note. That was when it deemed a picture of David in a newspaper ad to be indecent. That year, the tribunal also ruled indecent a picture in a fund-raising article for an eight-year-old mainland Chinese boy known as Didi who had suffered severe facial burns. Oh, and let us not forget its attempt to cover the manhood of a bronze statue in the lobby of an office tower with a cardboard fig leaf - it deemed New Man by the late Dame Elizabeth Frink to be indecent. A judge in another court quite sensibly overruled.



The Obscene Articles Tribunal