We are all supposed to respect the law. But this requires some cooperation from the law itself. If the law does stupid things we will laugh at it whether we wish to or not.
This brings us to the case of Mr Ki Chun-kei, who appeared in Eastern Court on Thursday charged with assaulting no less than five policemen simultaneously. A Hong Kong Hulk, you might think.
Not so. Mr Ki was trying to cross the road in Causeway Bay during the annual July 1 protestfest. He found the road closed and followed the crowd in search of a place which was not. Mr Ki was, he told the court, not drunk. However as he was carrying an open can of beer we may suspect that he was not entirely sober either.
At this point stories diverge. Mr Ki told the magistrate that he heard other people whistling and joined in. It seems Mr Ki has mastered the art of whistling with two fingers in your mouth (I have never been able to do this, for some reason) which means he has quite a loud whistle.
According to the prosecution, however, Mr Ki deliberately approached the five cops concerned and whistled “at” them. We may note in passing that in terms of the physics of whistling this is nonsense. Once the whistle emerges from your lips it spreads out indiscriminately in the fashion of ripples on a pond. You cannot project it in any particular direction. We may note also that some people may have been surprised by Mr Ki’s whistle but we would certainly have heard by now if there was any danger of people being injured by one, if only because whistlers would have deafened themselves.
Now assault is one of those flexible concepts beloved of lawyers. It is not a necessary part of the offence that the perpetrator actually touches, still less harms, the victim. So it would be dangerous for a layman to suggest that the law was in this case being stretched into areas where it was not intended to go. I notice that one of the officers involved claimed, no doubt without any prompting by the prosecution, that he had been temporarily deafened by Mr Ki’s wolf-whistle. Another officer said she was “scared and humiliated”. By a whistle? Are we recruiting such fragile spirits as police persons these days?
But really one wishes that the person considering this prosecution had deployed less of the legal theology and a bit more old-fashioned common sense. Demonstrations are often rowdy affairs. People use a variety of ways of making noises. We do not expect our policemen to put up with abuse but we do not expect them to be shrinking violets either.
If protesters are not allowed to whistle in the vicinity of policemen, whatever next? Will there be prosecutions over shouts, over drums, gongs, bagpipes? Is it now a criminal offence to while away the long walk from Causeway Bay to Central with a few satirical verses from the Policemen’s Chorus in the Pirates of Penzance?
We are not supposed to say the law is an ass, even though it is a quotation from Charles Dickens. But it should beware of behaving like one.
tim's experiment 
Agreed. What a silly case!
Overstretched this time, Tim. It’s a question of fact, not principle. If I go up to you in a menacing manner, position myself beside your left ear and direct a high-decibel whistle into it, causing your ear to ring for a while, you’ve been assaulted in no uncertain terms. A well-crafted whistle could conceivably even cause long-term damage. The penalty is another thing and ought to be something mild, naturally. And, of course, it’s up to the prosecution to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he intended to assault the officer(s) in the first place.
I respectfully disagree. He wasn’t using a well-crafted whistle. He was just using his mouth. You can’t direct it anywhere. People have been whistling in this manner for centuries and while it may be an unpleasant surprise nobody has every suggested that you could damage anything.