Hong Kong district councillor loses final appeal over her Nazi banner-waving protest at Legco
Court accepts chamber’s rules as proportionate and constitutionally valid
A Hong Kong district councillor who was fined after yelling and waving a Nazi banner while protesting a landfill expansion plan during a legislative debate three years ago lost her final appeal on Wednesday at the city’s highest court.
But the judges did not accept the prosecution’s claim that the public had no right to express themselves in the public gallery owned by the government, saying the argument “subjugated a fundamental constitutional right to property interests”.
Fong was previously fined HK$2,000 for twice violating the council’s administrative instructions when she yelled and displayed a Nazi banner during a Legco subcommittee meeting in May 2014. She was protesting against a plan to expand a landfill in Tseung Kwan O.
The independent district councillor wore a T-shirt that read “protect Tseung Kwan O” and held a banner bearing a swastika, the symbol of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party, and yelled in the council’s public gallery during a meeting on May 7, 2014.