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.