Gladys Veronica Li, Senior Counsel at the Hong Kong Bar with a busy constitutional law and human rights practice, is a founding member of the Hong Kong Civic Party. She began to take an interest in public affairs on her return to Hong Kong in 1982, after 10 years' practice as a barrister in England. She became a member of the lobby group which sought to inform British MPs in the late 1980s about lack of democracy, absence of human rights protections and the importance of the rule of law in Hong Kong. She was Chairman of the Hong Kong Bar Association in 1995 and 1996.[1] Mild-mannered but forthright in her convictions, Ms Li has also been a member of the Article 23 Concern Group and the Article 45 Concern Group.
In 2011 she represented Filipina domestic helper Evangeline Banao Vallejos in Vallejos v. Commissioner of Registration. In the case, Vallejos was seeking permanent residency after working in Hong Kong for 25 years, in a contentious challenge to the Immigration Ordinance that stirred public discussion of human rights in Hong Kong.[2]
Li's father is Simon Li Fook-sean, a former senior judge who is part of the Li family that owns the Bank of East Asia and who stood as a candidate for Hong Kong Chief Executive in the first CE election in 1996.