- 3 the part of the judgment which emphasized that the sentence was proper when
such offences were committed “whether for profit or not”. Special mention
was also made of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to
which Hong Kong is committed and that to honour that commitment, there
must not only be effective laws at the state level, but appropriate sentencing at
the court level.
Up until the case of AG. v. TANG King-min [1986] HKLR 211, it
seems that for offences such as the present (which was under the old
Objectionable Publications Ordinance), the common penalty was a fine.
However, in TANG’s case, the Court of Appeal in Hong Kong recognized that
an immediate custodial sentence was not wrong but that comparatively short
sentences may be adequate in “mild to average cases”. There have been many
occasions since then for these courts to consider the appropriate sentence in
such cases.
It is not necessary to go through all of them suffice it to say that the
general view taken seems to be that an immediate sentence varying between 4
to 6 months, depending upon the facts and circumstances of the case, is
appropriate.
S.2(2), which is part of the “Interpretation” section of Cap.390,
simply says that for the purposes of the ordinance, “obscenity” and
“indecency” include violence, depravity, and repulsiveness. I frankly do not
think that when the legislature enacted that part, that they had ever dreamed of
the possibility of someone publishing something which even came close to the
sort of obscenity that I have the misfortunate of encountering here. Certainly
the words “depravity” and “repulsiveness” are not strong enough to describe
the contents of the articles which the Appellant had published and possessed