30/01/2024
30/01/2024
HONG KONG, Jan 30, (AP): Hong Kong began public consultation on a local National Security Law on Tuesday, more than three years after Beijing imposed a similar law that has all but wiped out dissent in the semi-autonomous city.
The new law could expand the government's ability to prosecute residents for offenses like collaborating with foreign forces to influence legislation or "publish misleading statements,” and to close down civil society organizations. Some of its provisions threaten criminal prosecutions for acts committed anywhere in the world.
Hong Kong’s mini-constitution, the Basic Law, calls for the city to enact a national security law, but it's been delayed for decades because of widespread public opposition based on fears it would erode civil liberties. In 2003, an attempt to pass a version of the law sparked street protests that drew half a million people, and the legislation was shelved.
But the city's crackdown on political opposition likely clears the way for the bill to pass easily. Since 2020, many of the city’s leading pro-democracy activists have been arrested, silenced or forced into exile. Dozens of civil society groups have been disbanded, and outspoken media outlets like Apple Daily and Stand News have been shut down.
The draft text will be written later based on input from public consultation, which will begin Tuesday and will end Feb. 28. But the city released a 110-page document Tuesday outlining its plans for the legislation.
City leader John Lee called the legislation a "constitutional responsibility.”
"We shouldn’t wait any longer,” he said during a news conference. "The threats to national security, they are real. We have experienced all these threats. We have suffered from them badly.”
Both the Hong Kong and Beijing governments have hailed the previous National Security Law for restoring stability after the massive pro-democracy protests in 2019.
Lee said a local version is still necessary to keep Hong Kong safe against "potential sabotage” and "undercurrents that try to create troubles,” in particular surviving ideas about Hong Kong independence. Lee also said that some foreign agents may still be active in Hong Kong.
He said other countries, including the US, UK and Singapore, have similar laws to safeguard security and Hong Kong would draw from them.
Critics worry authorities will use a domestic national security law as another tool to crack down on dissidents, further eroding freedoms that were promised to the former British colony when it returned to Chinese rule in 1997.
The Beijing-imposed security law criminalized subversion, advocating secession, and collusion with foreign forces to intervene in the city’s affairs as well as terrorism, but did not cover all the offenses authorities wanted to target.
Eric Lai, a research fellow at the Georgetown Center for Asian Law, said that the one-month public consultation was shorter than the three months typical for important laws, saying it appeared to be "window dressing.”