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Hong KongLaw and Crime

Ex-prosecutor loses judicial challenge against sacking for emails flouting neutrality

Court rules civil service had grounds to dismiss him over remarks questioning police integrity and inviting coworkers to 2020 Tiananmen Square vigil

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Former prosecutor William Wong has lost a judicial challenge against his dismissal for remarks he made in emails that accused police of lying and invited colleagues to attend the Tiananmen Square vigil in 2020. Photo: Brian Wong
Crowds attend the 30th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Victoria Park in 2019. Photo: James Wendlinger
Brian Wong
A former senior Hong Kong prosecutor has lost a judicial challenge against his dismissal over remarks made in two emails questioning the integrity of police and inviting colleagues to attend a June 4 Tiananmen Square vigil.

In a judgment delivered on Tuesday, the High Court ruled that the civil service had sufficient basis to sack William Wong Wa-fun and strip him of 26 years’ worth of pension entitlements for violating the standards of conduct expected of a public servant.

Mr Justice Russell Coleman said Wong placed himself in an embarrassing position by alleging in an internal email that police, his close work counterparts, had lied about the motives for high-profile arrests of opposition politicians and activists during the 2019 anti-government protests.
Coleman said the judicial review applicant also aroused concern from colleagues and the press by sending a second mass email saying he wished he and his co-workers could “do the same thing” on “the last June 4 before the enactment of the national security law” on June 30, 2020.

A disciplinary inquiry into Wong’s misconduct allegations was entitled to conclude that the appeal could be viewed as “inviting or inciting others to take part in activities prohibited under the social distancing policy” during the Covid-19 pandemic, the judge found.

“Both emails can properly be thought to have affected the applicant’s proper discharge of his official duties,” Coleman wrote.

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