Judge ruling a blow to transgender rights in Hong Kong as inmates told they must do time according to their biology not what they identify as
But Mr Justice Thomas Au says prisoners should have right to be searched by man or woman, and says denying access to hormone treatment while in jail is ‘unreasonable’
Transgender inmates who have not undergone reassignment surgery do not have the right to serve their time in prisons for the gender they have chosen, a Hong Kong court said on Friday.
In a far-reaching decision, Mr Justice Thomas Au Hing-cheung ruled against Luigi Recasa Navarro, who brought a judicial challenge in 2015 after being jailed for a year in 2014.
The Filipino woman, who was 19 at the time and still had male genitalia, was forced to serve her sentence in all-male facilities, was subjected to strip-searches and cavity searches by male guards, and was denied access to hormones she had been taking since she was 12 years old for almost the entire length of her incarceration.
In an experience she said left her deeply traumatised, Navarro was placed in solitary confinement at Pik Uk Correctional Institution, in Clear Water Bay, at the start of her sentence, before being transferred to the male wing of the Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre, as authorities struggled to accommodate her within the system.
While Au denied Navarro’s claim that she had been discriminated against by being placed in a male prison, he partially supported her challenges against the cavity searches, which Navarro said should have been carried out by a woman, and said the decision to deny her access to hormone treatment was “unreasonable”.
