National security law looms over Hong Kong freedoms
HONG KONG: Hong Kong’s landmark ban on a proindependence party has reignited concerns the government is pushing towards national security legislation that could be the death knell for the city’s freedoms.
Article 23 of semi- autonomous Hong Kong’s mini- constitution, the Basic Law, says the city must enact national security laws to prohibit “treason, secession, sedition (and) subversion” against the Chinese government.
But the clause has never been implemented due to deeply held public fears it would curtail Hong Kong’s cherished rights, such as freedom of expression and the press.
Those liberties are unseen on the mainland and are protected by an agreement made before Britain handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997.
An attempt to implement Article 23 in 2003 was shelved after half a million people took to the street in protest.
But 15 years later it is back on the table, as an independence movement calling for the city to split from China incenses Beijing.
Monday’s ban on the proindependence Hong Kong National Party ( HKNP), on the grounds of national security and public safety, was made under the colonialera Societies Ordinance and is the latest move in a campaign to muzzle pro-independence sentiment.
Activists have been banned from standing for office and disqualified from the legislature, while protest leaders have been prosecuted.
That growing repression is “introducing the definitions, transgressions, and punishments that are to become part of Hong Kong law”, once national security legislation is brought in, says Suzanne Pepper, an honorary fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The introduction of Article 23 is part of Beijing’s strengthening campaign to suppress separatism in any of its territories and impose its definition of a ‘unified China’, diluting the promises made to Hong Kong in the handover agreement, Pepper told AFP.
“Hong Kong is step- by- step learning that Beijing is attaching mainland definitions to all those rights and freedoms,” she said.
Chinese officials are raising pressure for Article 23 to be enacted and city leader Carrie Lam has stressed it is the government’s ‘constitutional responsibility’ to do so.