HONG KONG - In a reversal of a lower court’s 2002 ruling, the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal dropped all charges remaining against 8 Falun Gong practitioners on Thursday.

The charges resulted from a meditative vigil 16 people held in Hong Kong in March 2002 outside the Liaison Office to the Beijing government. Police arrested and forcibly removed the 16 from the sidewalk. Six charges brought against the defendants included obstruction of a public place, obstructing police, and assault.

A high-profile trial in August 2002 found the Falun Gong practitioners guilty, with fines imposed. They appealed the convictions. Four of the six convictions originally entered against the entire group of 16 were quashed during a November 2004 court ruling.

The 61-page May 5 decision noted that, “the appellants were engaged in a peaceful demonstration in exercise of their constitutional right.”

The judgment said, “The inescapable conclusion is accordingly that the objective requirement of reasonable suspicion of a public place obstruction without lawful excuse cannot be made out either on the basis of what had been said at the briefings or of what was self-evident at the scene. It follows that the arrests for obstruction… were unlawful. This in turn means that the actions taken by the officers to remove the appellants from the vehicle while keeping them in police detention were not performed in the due execution of their duty.”

The court allowed the appeal of the defendants, and all four remaining convictions were quashed.