Comments from a Non-Practitioner: Why Does the Blue Bill of Article 23 Keep Raising Its Stakes?

By Wu Zhisen (News Commentator)

(Clearwisdom.net)

The Hong Kong SAR's National Security (Legislative Provisions) Bill (referred to as the Blue Bill of Article 23 or the Bill thereinafter) has been forcefully pushed into the process of legislation by the Hong Kong SAR Government despite the strong opposition of the public. The Hong Kong Security Bureau made a lot of fanfare about how lenient the revised clauses were and how irrelevant the Bill would be to the daily lives of average citizens. Ironically, such a claim coincides appallingly with the earlier propaganda when the public consultation documents for the Bill were first publicized. If the earlier version of the Bill had been truly lenient and every average citizen could have already accepted it, why did the Bill need to be revised?

Despite the revision, the Bill can never be considered lenient. In fact, it keeps raising its stakes and the traps are ubiquitous in the Bill. Take the "proscription of the organizations endangering national security" for example. According to the current Hong Kong SAR codes regarding organizations and civil groups, the SAR government can proscribe any local organizations in the name of national security or public security, which has already been regarded as very "cruel." However, in the Bill, the SAR Government has even taken a hike in this matter by introducing a Central Government controlled mechanism for proscribing local organizations. This mechanism has greatly confused the legal concepts between Mainland China and Hong Kong, which are two totally different systems. The consequences are that those local organizations that have ties with Mainland China have been greatly terrified and worried, which causes a serious threat to Hong Kong's freedom of assembly.

What is more severe is that the revised Bill allows secret trials to take place without the presence of the defendant and/or his lawyer, which completely contradicts Hong Kong's spirit of ruling by jurisdiction and law.

Another example is the crime of Sedition [according to the SAR government's National Security (Legislative Provisions) Bill, Sedition refers to inciting others to commit treason, subversion or secession, or inciting others to engage in violent public disorder that would seriously endanger the stability of the PRC]. However, according to the Bill, if a person only incites others but the "others" have not yet committed treason, subversion, secession, etc., this person will still be prosecuted, which constitutes a serious threat to freedom of speech. The Bill has disregarded owning seditious publications as a crime, but maintains that it is a crime to handle (e.g., publish, display, print, reproduce, import or export, etc.) publications of sedition, and the punishment has been greatly increased to 7 years of imprisonment and a fine of 500,000 HK dollars. Even if an article that is regarded to be seditious has been written, it must be published before it can catch people's attention. Then, this author may very well be implicated for the crime of Sedition or the crime of handling seditious publications. In other words, the author may be charged for two crimes for one single article. The consequences will be that in order to avoid being punished by the Bill, people will have to either refrain from talking about anything that may potentially implicate themselves or simply shut up and not talk about anything.

Feb. 17, 2003

 Yearly Archive   Printer Version