Posted on: Monday, December 30, 2002
EDITORIAL
Proposed laws threaten Hong Kong's freedoms
When Hong Kong reverted to Chinese rule in 1997, Beijing granted Hong Kong a special status and promised to preserve its freedoms.
Those freedoms have since been battered and bent, but the worst fears at the time of the handover proved unfounded — until a couple of years ago, with the beginnings of a crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement.
Although this movement had broken no laws in Hong Kong, pressure from Beijing to outlaw it grew and gained currency. Tung Chee-hwa, Hong Kong's Beijing-appointed chief executive, branded the group an "evil cult," and some prominent Hong Kong officials began calling for new laws to crack down on its members.
An attack on one religious sect, of course, clears the way in principle for attacking any religious sect — of which there is a profusion in Hong Kong.
Now the threat broadens exponentially, as the government seeks insidious security legislation that would sharply curtail freedoms by allowing the government to outlaw political activities, dissent and the distribution of information it finds unacceptable.
The Hong Kong government, at the urging of Beijing, wants to ban "seditious" publications and "unauthorized" news, and make it a crime to threaten the "stability" or Hong Kong or China or to reveal "state secrets."
China's jails are full of people who have — sometimes inadvertently or innocently — run afoul of such laws. They are vague to the point where authorities can apply them to almost anyone.
Such laws clearly would endanger Hong Kong's political liberties, threaten freedom of speech and a free press — all this in a vibrant entrepôt for which the free flow of information is crucial.
Enactment of such laws would in part betray the "one country, two systems" concept guaranteed for 50 years in the agreement under which Britain transferred its colony to China.
In hastening the demise of Hong Kong as a world financial capital, these laws would hurt China itself, both financially and by depriving itself of a worthy model for its own liberalization. It would also demonstrate to the Taiwanese that "one country, two systems" would be no bargain for them.
