High Court reinstates mask ban for next seven days - RTHK
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High Court reinstates mask ban for next seven days

2019-11-22 HKT 18:09
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  • The police had stopped enforcing the anti-mask law after it was ruled unconstitutional on Monday. File photo: AFP
    The police had stopped enforcing the anti-mask law after it was ruled unconstitutional on Monday. File photo: AFP
The High Court announced on Friday evening that it would allow police to enforce a mask ban for the next seven days, despite finding earlier this week that the law introduced under emergency powers was unconstitutional.

The government had asked the court to temporarily suspend its ruling while the issue goes through the appeals process.

But the court agreed only to grant a short interim suspension until November 29 "in view of the great public importance of the issues raised in this case, and the highly exceptional circumstances that Hong Kong is currently facing", to give the government time to take the matter to the Court of Appeal.

In their ruling, judges Godfrey Lam and Anderson Chow noted that by November 14, a total of 632 people had been arrested under the anti-mask law, which had been imposed by Chief Executive Carrie Lam on October 5.

Lam and Chow said "reckless and irresponsible attacks had been carried out by persons wearing facial coverings before our judgement was handed down, and have continued unabated since."

They added that there is no evidence that their judgement on Monday had affected the frequency of unlawful acts or the degree of violence used by what they called "so-called protesters".

The judges also said they had seen no evidence to show that postponing their ruling would bring about any substantial relief to the public danger currently faced by Hong Kong.

"It seems to us a very strong thing to say that even though a regulation creating an offence has been held invalid, the government should be allowed to continue to make arrests and charge the arrestees with offences based on it."

During a hearing on Thursday, the lawyer for two dozen pan-democrats – who brought the judicial review over the mask ban – had warned that allowing the police to enforce a law that had been ruled unconstitutional would be a threat to the city's rule of law.

The government's suspension request came after the legislative affairs commission of the National People's Congress Standing Committee controversially claimed that Hong Kong's courts do not have the authority to decide whether the SAR's laws are constitutional or not and this power rests solely with the NPCSC.

The police had stopped enforcing the ban following Monday's High Court judgement.