HONG KONG (AP) – A group of pro-democracy Hong Kong legislators filed a legal challenge against the government’s use of a colonial-era emergency law to criminalize the wearing of masks at rallies to quell anti-government demonstrations, which diminished in intensity but didn’t stop.
The mask ban that went into effect at midnight Friday triggered an overnight rash of widespread violence and destruction in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory, including the setting of fires and attacks on an off-duty police officer who fired a live shot in self-defense that wounded a 14-year-old.
Two activists failed to obtain a court injunction Friday against the ban on face coverings that the government says have made it tough for police to identify radical protesters.
In a second bid Saturday, lawmaker Dennis Kwok said a group of 24 legislators filed a legal appeal to block the anti-mask law on wider constitutional grounds. He said the city’s leader, Chief Executive Carrie Lam, acted in bad faith by bypassing the Legislative Council, Hong Kong’s parliament, in invoking the emergency law.
“This is a Henry VIII situation. This is basically I say what is law…and I say when that ceases to be law. That’s not how our constitution works,” Kwok told a news conference late Saturday. “We say that she doesn’t have such powers, that she cannot avoid” the Legislative Council.
The court will hear the case Sunday morning. Lam has said she will seek the council’s backing for the law when its session resumes Oct. 16 and hasn’t ruled out further measures if the violence continues.
Lawmaker Claudia Mo called the Emergency Ordinance a “weapon of mass destruction” that could pave the way for more draconian regulations.
Kwok said the group also asked the court to rule that the emergency law, enacted by British colonial rulers in 1922 to quell a seamen’s strike and last used in 1967 to crush riots, was incompatible with rights and freedoms under Hong Kong’s constitution that was put in place after it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
