Fired Hong Kong prosecutor accuses disciplinary hearing of ‘bias’ towards civil service

William Wong lost job and pension rights after email accuses police of lying and another asks colleagues to mark Tiananmen Square crackdown anniversary

Hong Kong courts

Brian Wong

Published: 7:55pm, 7 Jun 2024

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A former senior Hong Kong prosecutor has lodged a legal challenge to his dismissal over remarks made in two emails that accused police of lying and invited colleagues to observe the June 4 Tiananmen Square vigil.

William Wong Wa-fun, in a writ made public on Friday, asked the High Court for a judicial review against the civil service’s decision to fire him and strip him of pension entitlements built up over almost 30 years after a disciplinary panel found him guilty of misconduct in July 2023.

The ex-Department of Justice staff member sparked controversy in September 2019 when he alleged in an internal email that police had lied about the motives for high-profile arrests of opposition politicians and activists before anti-government protests on August 31 that year.

He was in the spotlight again in 2020 after he sent another mass email, just hours before the commemoration of the 1989 crackdown, which went ahead despite a ban because of coronavirus restrictions, and weeks before the Beijing-posed national security law came into force.

Wong wrote that he “[wished] we do the same thing” on “the last [June 4] before the enactment of the national security law”.

Wong was suspended in March 2021 after it was alleged he had breached civil service protocols by sending correspondence direct to police chief inspectors working at Eastern Court instead of routing his emails through his supervisor.

An internal inquiry found Wong guilty of two counts of misconduct in connection with the emails he sent in September 2019 and June 2020.

Civil service minister Ingrid Yeung Ho Poi-yan ordered his immediate dismissal in March this year.

Former senior court prosecutor William Wong appears at the High Court for a separate civil case in 2022. Photo: Brian Wong

Wong is a former chairman of the Court Prosecutors (Department of Justice) Association, which represents the non-lawyer tenured group of prosecutors who work at the magistrates’ court level.

He raised nine grounds in support of his application for a review, including perceived irregularities in the inquiry’s procedures and errors in its findings.

Wong’s arguments, listed in a 37-page writ, included that the two emails were sent in a personal capacity outside working hours and were irrelevant to the discharge of his professional duties.

He alleged the later inquiry wrongly placed the burden of proof on him by asking him to provide “concrete evidence” to support what were alleged to be “unwarranted allegations” about the police in the 2019 email.

Wong also suggested the disciplinary panel’s decision not to look into the truthfulness of his police dishonesty claim was so absurd it was comparable to the inquisition of Galileo in the 17th century.

“If the contents of the [2019] email were true, then there were no ‘unwarranted allegations’ but only valuable advice to police and as a result, there was no failing to meet the requirements of integrity, [impartiality], political neutrality and professionalism,” the writ said.

Wong also claimed the language used in the 2020 Tiananmen Square email was so vague he could not be said to have incited colleagues to commit unlawful acts.

He added his punishment was “harsh and oppressive” and highlighted a recent judgment in favour of a former government school teacher who was denied her retirement benefits after she was found guilty of misconduct.

Wong first requested a judicial review in September 2022 over what he said was “apparent bias” in favour of the civil service at his disciplinary hearings.

But Mr Justice Russell Coleman of the High Court struck out the application two months later after he ruled there was “absolutely no merit” in the application.

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