EDITORIAL
China threatening Hong Kong freedoms

In the nearly six years since China regained Hong Kong from Britain, China has made considerable progress, certainly economically and to some extent politically, toward a better life for its people

Hong Kong is a different story. Although Beijing promised 50 years of "one country, two systems," supposedly guaranteeing the substantial freedoms that Hong Kong citizens enjoyed under British rule, some subtle erosion of that promise was evident almost from the start.

On July 9, however, that deterioration will become far more overt when the Hong Kong government, now hardly better than a Beijing puppet, intends to pass a national security bill that would criminalize "treason, sedition, subversion and the theft of state secrets."

It is such laws that are used in China to put political critics in prison for very long prison terms. Even if its application were judicious, the threat it presents is sure to be extremely chilling.

"The law," Hong Kong lawmaker Martin Lee writes, "would introduce Chinese legal standards through the back door, which would make it possible for the government to effectively shut down groups with ties to suspect mainland organizations like Falun Gong or the Roman Catholic Church. Journalists, and government officials who leak information to them, could be subject to prison terms. The bill, combined with the absence of democratic checks and balances in our system, would roll back basic freedoms, including religious freedom, press freedom and freedom of association."

Lee points out that it was the free press of Hong Kong, now threatened by the new law, that exposed the SARS cover-up by Chinese officials, saving countless lives there and abroad.

President Bush and the international community must use the remaining time to convince the Beijing and Hong Kong governments of the folly of introducing repression in what hitherto has been an oasis of freedom.