Advertisement
Hong Kong protests: judge who signed petition against extradition bill barred from handling related cases
- High Court’s Patrick Li is second judge be disqualified from such hearings under judiciary bid to avoid perception of bias
- Chief justice earlier censured another judge for expressing sympathy for a violent offender who attacked people at a protest site
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
A Hong Kong judge has been barred from handling protest-related cases after he signed a petition against the now-withdrawn extradition bill that sparked the ongoing anti-government unrest, the second to be sidelined in a bid to avoid the perception of bias.
The High Court’s Patrick Li Hon-leung would not hear any cases connected with issues arising from the petition he backed, the city’s judiciary revealed on Thursday.
Citing the Guide to Judicial Conduct, a judiciary spokesman said: “A particular judge is disqualified from sitting if the circumstances are such as would lead a reasonable, fair-minded and well-informed observer to conclude that there is a real possibility that the judge would be biased.
“In general, the above fundamental principles apply to the listing of cases at various levels of courts. In accordance with the above principles, no case concerning the issues arising from the petition signed by [Li] has been listed before him to avoid any apparent bias.”
Li, who graduated from the University of Hong Kong’s law school, is a former classmate of Benny Tai Yiu-ting, now a legal scholar there and an activist who co-founded 2014’s Occupy Central protests, which demanded universal suffrage for Hong Kong.
Advertisement