Punish surrendering Occupy protesters leniently, Hong Kong top court judge urges
Participants in civil disobedience often proved right by history, says Leonard Hoffman
A non-permanent judge of the city’s top court says Occupy protesters who have turned themselves in to police should be punished leniently, considering they were “not wicked people” but acting out of “conviction and conscience”.
Speaking to an audience at the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre on rule of law and arbitration yesterday, Lord Justice Leonard Hoffmann said civil disobedience had “an old tradition” in the common law world.
“In any civilised society, there is room for people making political points by civil disobedience,” said Hoffmann, a retired judge from the House of Lords.
“Very often, people [who participated in civil disobedience] are justified by history afterwards,” he said.
Hoffmann gave the example of the suffragettes – the women who broke laws to fight for the right to vote in Britain in the early 20th century. Some of them chained themselves to the railings of government buildings and ended up being penalised with small fines at the magistrate courts.
“In the end, they were found to be right,” he said.