The Court of Appeal of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region has dismissed an appeal by two young people elected to be lawmakers against an earlier court ruling disqualifying them from taking their seats in the Legislative Council because they failed to take their oaths of office.

As the Court of Appeal stated in its verdict on Wednesday, Sixtus Leung Chung-hang and Yau Wai-ching, by what they did and said during their swearing-in, effectively declined to take the LegCo oath as stipulated by Article 104 of the Basic Law.

It sided with a judgment by the Court of First Instance of the HKSAR early this month that found Leung and Yau were "derogatory and humiliating of the country" and were advocating Hong Kong's independence.