Demosisto party candidate Agnes Chow launches High Court bid to have Hong Kong election ban overturned on Bill of Rights grounds

Joshua Wong’s comrade-in-arms was bidding to become city’s youngest ever lawmaker, before her disqualification

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Agnes Chow is challenging the ruling that stopped her standing for election. Photo: Nora Tam

Published: 3:02pm, 8 May 2018Updated: 10:37pm, 8 May 2018

Young Hong Kong democracy activist Agnes Chow Ting went to the High Court on Tuesday to challenge her disqualification from the Legislative Council’s March by-elections.

After filing her petition, the 21-year-old Baptist University student said the court needed to safeguard Hongkongers’ rights when they are under threat.

“The most important issue was not whether I can run for future elections, it was whether Hong Kong people’s most basic rights and freedoms can be protected ... If we don’t with different ways try to do Hong Kong justice, there could be more and more political suppressions,” she warned.

Chow, Occupy student leader Joshua Wong Chi-fung’s comrade-in-arms, was seeking to become the city’s youngest ever lawmaker by contesting a seat vacated by party chairman Nathan Law Kwun-chung. Law was disqualified last year for an improperly taken oath of office.

Law (left), Chow and Wong after Chow’s candidacy was ruled invalid by returning officer Teng. Photo: Felix Wong

Chow’s candidacy was invalidated in January by returning officer Anne Teng Yu-yan on the grounds that the doctrine of “democratic self-determination”, as promoted by Demosisto, was inconsistent with the “one country, two systems” principle enshrined and implemented under the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution.