Magazines face prosecution over sex photos

Two magazines face prosecution for publishing photos showing singer-actor Edison Chen Koon-hei in sex acts with a string of female stars after the Obscene Articles Tribunal re-classified them as indecent.

The tribunal gave the pictures, in which the private parts were blanked out, an interim classification of neither indecent nor obscene.

Overturning that decision yesterday, it said that even with the sensitive parts obscured, the accompanying explicit text left the reader in no doubt about what was going on.

It was the latest development in the scandal that rocked Hong Kong after hundreds of pictures of Chen with some of Hong Kong's most famous female stars, allegedly taken from his laptop computer, were widely published on the internet.

Magistrate Selwyn Hason Au See-hin, who sat on the tribunal with four adjudicators, also said that, as cropped, the pictures were still too revealing, even enabling readers to estimate the size of the private parts of the person depicted.

The classification of Class II indecency was made in respect of 40 pictures published by the Oriental Sunday magazine, and 94 published in Next Magazine in February.

The Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (Tela), which had challenged the earlier Class I classification by a different set of adjudicators, said it would prosecute the publishers based on the new classification.