South China Morning Post: Chief Executive should stick with laissez-faire policy

Letters to the Editor

06/06/2001

I refer to the report headlined "Sect an echo of Jonestown deaths: Tung" (South China Morning Post, May 22).

I found the inflammatory remarks made by Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa about Falun Gong to be very distressing.

While seeming to be so worried about mind control, Mr Tung is actually undermining real freedom of thought in the SAR.

As Margaret Ng pointed out so eloquently in her article headlined "Chipping away at our hard-earned freedom" (Post, May 22), our Government is on the brink of introducing legislation that gives the state a capricious power over the most basic freedoms of the Hong Kong people.

Mr Tung accuses Falun Gong of being a "mix of xx and politics". As far as I can tell, the only crime Falun Gong is guilty of is having a more enthusiastic, faster-growing membership than that of the Chinese [party's name omitted]. It seems that the group has stepped into political arguments only because of the painful pressures imposed by Beijing.

Imagine if one's deepest spiritual beliefs were banned. Any one of us would similarly speak out for our right to practise religion in our preferred way. Hong Kong legislators would do well to reflect on the SAR's most successful long-term policy - namely, the spirit of laissez-faire business.

The Hong Kong community long basked in the knowledge that any individual, no matter how poor his beginnings, could work hard and achieve anything for himself. This has always made Hong Kong a joyous, progressive, carefree place.

The Government is dangerously poised to create a community atmosphere of paranoia and fear through the kind of government intervention that is the exact opposite of the spirit of laissez-faire.

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