Transgender woman’s detention in Hong Kong all-male prison ‘unconstitutional’, court told
Lawyers for Filipino Navarro Luigi Recasa claim that the woman was subjected to repeated strip-searches by male prison guards and other ‘degrading and inhuman’ treatment during her time in the city’s correctional institutions
A transgender woman who is seeking a legal review of a decision by police and the Correctional Services Department to treat her as a male prisoner was a victim of discrimination and unconstitutional prison rules, the High Court heard on Monday.
Her lawyer argued that she was “extremely sensitive” while in transition from male to female, and that the treatment she had received was “inhuman and degrading”.
Philippine national Navarro Luigi Recasa, now 21, has since gone back to her home country after serving time in Hong Kong for drug and immigration offences, her lawyers said outside court.
On Monday, Clive Grossman SC, for Recasa, told the court his client had received partial gender reassignment surgery.
Recasa was said to have received hormone treatment since the age of 12 and had breast augmentation surgery at the age of 18.
She was arrested for drug offences in June 2014 and paraded in front of male detainees at Central Police Station, it was claimed. After an initial hearing at the Eastern Court, she was remanded at the all-male Pik Uk Correctional Institution.
