19th August 2026 – (Hong Kong) The High Court today dismissed a habeas corpus application by the “Save Lily” parents seeking the return of their infant son Danny from Social Welfare Department care, with Madam Justice Queeny Au-Yeung, SBS, of the Court of First Instance holding that the writ was mistaken and unsuitable.
Keith Tsang Wai-bong and Kwan Pui-sin, named as applicants in HCAL 1375/2026, with the child identified as DK, had Danny in Hong Kong before the department removed him and obtained a three-year protection order placing him under its watch. They argued that limits on breastfeeding and other arrangements amounted to abuse and detention, and filed the writ themselves. In court the judge said she would set the application aside, with reasons in the written judgment, and would make no order as to costs.
Habeas corpus, she wrote, is a remedy for a person who is detained, not a vehicle for ordinary child-protection disputes unless the child’s liberty has been taken away or the child is being confined. The procedure must be used properly. Where a more workable route exists, such as an appeal or judicial review, that channel should be taken first.
The father had argued that the department had produced no evidence that the couple might later neglect or endanger the boy. The judge disagreed. Officials had pointed to the parents’ failure to attend prenatal and postnatal checks and to vaccinate their son, and to the fact that another of their children is now in official care in another country. Those matters, she said, were factors she would consider, and they showed to some degree that the pair might put the child’s health at risk.
Outside court the parents said they would take Danny’s protection order further in the magistrates’ courts. Tsang, who was visibly emotional and in tears as he spoke, also said they would not have another child in Hong Kong because they felt doing so was dangerous.
The Department of Justice had asked for costs. The judge refused. The case did not involve the public interest, she said, but it did involve a couple who had chosen to give birth and raise a child in their own way, a method that may have overlooked possible danger to the boy. Having weighed the circumstances, she would not order costs.