Chinese community outraged by 'Hong Kong Foo-ey' comments in court

Members of the Chinese community have stepped up their campaign regarding judicial fairness, proportionality and the stereotyping of the Chinese community as a whole. The campaign concerns the treatment of Chinese businessman Mr Pun, whose restaurant and takeaway were raided by UK Boarder Agency / Suffolk Police.

An open letter has been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions, and other senior government ministers including Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke which is published below.

Keir Starmer QC, Director of Public Prosecutions

Copy to: Kenneth Clarke, Secretary of State for Justice, Dominic Grieve, Attorney General

Dear Mr Starmer,

Re: Racial Comments/ Prejudice in Court - Ipswich, Pun Family

We write to register our concerns that racially prejudicial comments, were made at Ipswich Crown Court during the trial of Mr. Phing Woon Pun and his family. We have now been made aware of some of the dialogue which took place during those court proceedings.

In the closing speech to the jury, Counsel for the Crown made a number of remarks of an offensive nature which bordered upon racism. As all of the Defendants in the Trial are of Chinese ethnicity, remarks that the defence case was "Hong Kong fuehy" and that they (the Defendants) wanted "their noodles boiled and fried" are uncalled for, unfair and sought to inflict damage through racial stereotyping and prejudice. In these particular circumstances and it is in any case regrettable that Judge Thompson did not distance himself from these remarks.

Instead, Judge Thompson chose to highlight to the jury the ethnic background of Counsel appearing in the case (three out of five of the Defendants' Counsels were not "white"") and his use of such terms when referring to the Chinese workers as "people washed up upon our beaches" could be considered to appeal to the base instincts of the jury.

When one of the Defendants Kim Tai Wong (Mr Pun's wife) who relied upon an interpreter to understand the proceedings had tears coming down her face, Judge Thompson commented to the jury that she may have become upset because she realised of the trouble she had got herself into. He invited the jury to speculate and this was compounded in that Kim Tai Wong had exercised her right to silence and as such the jury were invited to speculate upon matters which were not, nor could have been in evidence before the Court. In any event the remark was prejudicial in the extreme.

These kinds of remarks/prejudice are totally unacceptable within a social context and are distressing in any circumstance. That this type of conduct is in open display during Court proceedings, and, further, not only permitted, but actually propagated by the judge, whom we are supposed to trust and rely to uphold the law, raises question as to why such racial prejudice is alive and well in the Court room.

Yours sincerely

Olivia Boland
Chair, Suffolk Chinese Family Welfare Association