Civil Rights Jitters In Hong Kong

The government released details Tuesday of a proposal to enact an anti-subversion law that would broaden authorities' investigative powers and mandate life imprisonment for serious crimes against the state.

Critics fear the law could be used to crush the civil liberties central to Hong Kong's capitalist lifestyle.

"It could criminalize free speech. If someone should continually criticize the central government or seek for a vindication of the 1989 pro-democracy movement, would officials interpret it as violating the law?" said Rose Wu of the Hong Kong Christian Institute. "Any religious expression, criticism can be targeted."

Shouting slogans and brandishing banners, over a dozen protestors marched to government headquarters in Hong Kong's Central district Tuesday, accusing the government of trying to stifle freedoms under the pretext of enacting a law to prevent subversion against mainland China.

"Civil rights cannot be stripped off," they chanted.

Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa says the planned law is necessary for national security.

"Our proposal would not undermine in any way the existing human rights and civil liberties enjoyed by Hong Kong people, nor will our existing ways of life be affected," he told reporters.

The proposal released for "public consultation" Tuesday says the new law would be defined "clearly and tightly" to ensure it would not violate rights and freedoms guaranteed to residents when this former British colony reverted to Chinese rule. The requirements of international human rights treaties were also taken into account, it said.

Officials recently decreed that after five years as a "special administrative region" of China the territory needed to push ahead with the widely unpopular legislation, raising an outcry from opposition lawmakers and human rights groups.

The proposal said the purpose of the new law would be to protect the "sovereignty, territorial integrity, unity and national security," of China and of the Hong Kong government.

Noting that existing law limited authorities to entering a premises without a warrant only to stop a crime, it calls for granting emergency "entry and search powers" for the sake of investigation of suspected offenses of treason, secession, sedition and subversion.

The proposed penalty for those crimes would be life imprisonment.

The scope of the new law and whether it will impinge on Hong Kong's wide-ranging freedoms will test the high degree of autonomy China promised the territory after the 1997 handover, political observers say.

Hong Kong is required under Article 23 of its post-handover constitution to enact a law banning any acts of subversion, treason, sedition and secession against China.

But wary of the disquiet it would cause both in Hong Kong and overseas in the first few sensitive years after the handover, the government chose not to present it until now.

Concerned that Hong Kong will be used as a base by foreign forces to subvert the mainland, Beijing has put intense pressure on the city in recent months to draft the legislation.

But pro-democracy circles are dead against it, saying it could be used against anyone China or Hong Kong's Beijing-backed government finds objectionable, such as political dissidents and religious groups like the Falun Gong movement.

The government has opened the proposal to public consultation for three months, after which it will finalize draft legislation. It is not clear when it would become law.

Government-sponsored bills invariably win easy passage in Hong Kong's legislature as the chamber is dominated by pro-Beijing lawmakers.