Asian Angle | Dependent visa case gives Hong Kong’s gay community reason to hope

The Pride March in London this year was a particularly colourful and vibrant celebration of diversity. There were 30,000 participants, including 150 police officers. A million spectators were estimated to have lined the streets. Shops and billboards championed the event, which underlined the importance of tolerance, inclusiveness and equality.

In the same week, in July, Hong Kong’s top court ruled on the latest attempt by the city’s government to uphold discriminatory policies against gay couples. In a strong judgment, the court held that the Immigration Department’s refusal to grant dependency visas to same-sex couples was unlawful.

The significance of the Court of Final Appeal judgment lies not only in the victory for a lesbian, referred to as QT, but in the reasoning used by the five judges to reach that unanimous decision.

Their findings will make it more difficult for the government to pursue discriminatory policies in future. The ruling is likely to have an impact which goes far beyond the visa issue in question.

Within a few weeks of the ruling a gay civil servant claiming spousal and tax benefits granted to heterosexual couples announced he intended to take his case to the top court. Angus Leung Chun-kwong, who lost in the Court of Appeal in June, said he was encouraged by the top court’s decision on the visa issue. “Although the QT case concerned a different aspect, it showcased the importance of the government having to administer its policy with fairness and justify any differential treatment,” said Leung.

Then it emerged that a woman had launched an unprecedented court challenge to the government’s refusal to allow her to enter into a civil partnership with her female partner. The woman, known as Mk, filed the case in June, arguing that the government’s failure to recognise civil partnerships for same-sex couples breaches privacy and equality rights protected by the city’s de facto constitution, the Basic Law.