Lawmakers and civil activists were shocked when a police spokesman denied yesterday that officers had told Wedding Card Street protesters to remove their underwear, in the latest twist of a saga over police strip-searches that began in 2007.
At the Legislative Council's subcommittee meeting on police searches of detainees, Alan Yu Mun-wah, assistant commissioner of police, told lawmakers the results of internal police investigations into the controversy stemming from an October 2007 protest against the demolition of Wedding Card, or Lee Tung, Street.
'We only asked the detainees to remove their outer clothes, according to our internal findings,' Mr Yu said. Police knew of the protesters' allegations of being strip-searched at the North Point police station, he said, but no orders had been issued to conduct such searches.
Fifteen of the protesters campaigning for the preservation of the historic street in Wan Chai, famed for its profusion of wedding-card shops, were arrested. Eight were searched - four women and four men - according to male protester Wong Ho-yin, who was among those arrested.
Soon after, the protesters held a press conference complaining they had been strip-searched unnecessarily by police. A female protester said she saw a male sergeant looking at her after she had stripped, and two male protesters said they had been ordered to touch intimate parts of their bodies during the search.
The case raised public concern and was discussed at the UN's Committee against Torture in November, but police did not release the report of their internal investigation.