Watchdog investigates racy photos of activist

Media watchdogs have received more than 110 complaints against a magazine in the past two days over the publication of racy pictures of a student activist.

The Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority has launched an investigation after the latest issue of Chinese-language magazine, Oriental Sunday, featured on its cover photographs of University of Hong Kong student Christina Chan Hau-man in a tight top and a thong in her Cheung Chau home.

The authority will determine if the photographs breached the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance. Most of the 111 complaints received by the authority and the Press Council since Tuesday concerned obscenity and indecency.

However, Obscene Articles Tribunal adjudicator Mervyn Cheung Man-ping said the pictures might pass scrutiny if they did not reveal the subject's private parts.

'It is unethical to publish such shots especially as they were taken of her inside her house. But it is more a question of an invasion of privacy than the pictures' obscene nature as Chan had her clothes on,' he said.

In 2006, the tribunal ruled as indecent a picture published by the now-defunct Easy Finder magazine that showed Canto-pop star Gillian Chung Yan-tung changing her clothes back stage at a concert.