A vocal group of Hong Kong women have taken to the social media to question against a court decision sending a woman protestor to jail for using her breasts to “assault” a police officer.
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Footage from the incident shows the 30-year-old woman falling to the ground, but it is unclear what happened next. However, the video doesn’t explain much further apart from showing the woman with the bleeding face.
She said she had yelled “indecent assault” out of fear after the policeman’s hand landed on her left breast when he tried to grab the strap of her bag.
More than 200 activists turned up after the web users campaign for the breast walk outside the police headquarters in the Wan Chai district. “How can breasts be a weapon?” said Ms Ng Cheuk-ling, an activist from Hong Kong Women’s Coalition on Equal Opportunities.
At her sentencing on Thursday, Mr Chan said that if he did not “hand down a deterring sentence, the public might mistakenly think it is a trivial matter to assault police officers during protests”.
The Honk Kong people, including men, hit the roads protesting against the judge’s ruling wearing braziers over their t-shirts.
“We better watch out as one day police might accuse us of attacking with our penis or buttock”, a male activist donning a black bra told the crowds yesterday, before the unlawful gathering was broken up by police.
But magistrate Michael Chan Pik- kiu said she “used her female identity to trump up the allegation that the officer had molested” her, calling that a malicious act and harming the officer’s reputation, the Post reported earlier.
“The ruling is absurd”.
Lai-ying’s arrest, and the circulated pictures of her bloody face through the protest, induced on-line outrage as newsfeeds have been flooded with pictures of supporters that includes their – principally clothed – chests in solidarity.
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They held placards saying “Breasts are not weapons” and “Shame on the police” and shouted slogans demanding respect for the female body.
