Asia-Pacific

New security Bill raises fears for freedom in Hong Kong

Justice secretary says legislation is aimed at people who ‘spread speech that harms or jeopardises national security’

Hong Kong radio DJ and pro-democracy activist Tam Tak-chi lost a high court appeal on Thursday against his conviction and imprisonment for offences including seven counts of sedition. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP

Denis Staunton in Beijing
Thu Mar 7 2024 - 16:41

Hong Kong’s government will introduce a new national security Bill on Friday, raising fears of further erosion of civil liberties and freedom of expression in the former British colony. The legislation will introduce new prohibitions on treason, sedition, secession and subversion against the Chinese authorities.

It will supplement the National Security Law imposed on Hong Kong by Beijing in 2020 following pro-democracy demonstrations that saw violence between police and protesters. Hong Kong’s government says it is obliged to introduce such legislation under Article 23 of the Basic Law, the constitution introduced at the end of British colonial rule.

Chief executive John Lee, who was appointed by Beijing, said he had sent the Bill to the Legislative Council to be enacted as soon as possible. Justice secretary Paul Lam has said journalists have nothing to fear from the new legislation and that freedom on information and speech will continue to be protected under the Basic Law and that the government has no intention of banning social media.

“We have to understand that social media is a tool and we will not put a stop to a tool’s existence,” he said. “We are targeting the people who abuse or misuse this tool to spread speech that harms or jeopardises national security.”

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Journalists and publishers are among those who have been arrested and imprisoned in Hong Kong since 2020 under the National Security Law and a colonial-era sedition law. Apple Daily publisher Jimmy Lai, who has been behind bars for more than three years, is currently on trial under the National Security Law.

Three high court judges on Thursday rejected an appeal by radio DJ and pro-democracy activist Tam Tak-chi against his conviction and imprisonment for offences including seven counts of sedition. The court upheld Tam’s 40-month sentence, rejecting his lawyers’ argument that Hong Kong’s sedition law was a disproportionate restriction on free speech because there was no intent to incite violence.

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Mr Tam, who was known as “Fast Beat”, was a political activist, a Christian preacher, a presenter on an online radio station and a member of the now defunct People Power party. He was charged with uttering seditious words, including “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times”, a slogan used by pro-democracy demonstrators.

Unlike mainland China, Hong Kong has a common law system that is informed by precedents in other common law jurisdictions. Mr Tam’s lawyers invoked a ruling last year by the Privy Council in London that Trinidad and Tobago’s sedition law could not be used to convict people if there was no evidence that they intended to incite violence.

The high court ruled that because sedition is a statutory offence in Hong Kong rather than a common law offence as in Trinidad and Tobago, the Privy Council ruling did not apply. The judges said that words that might not have been viewed as seditious in the past could take on new meaning now that the situation in Hong Kong has changed.

“Words are not spoken in vacuum and cannot be understood in abstract. They must be understood against the contemporaneous sociocultural and political setting of society,” the judges said.

“Thus, words which were innocent in the past may have become offensive now with the change in the state of society.”

Thursday’s ruling could have implications for other sedition cases in Hong Kong, including one against two editors of the defunct Stand News that is seen as an important test for media freedom.

Denis Staunton

Denis Staunton

Denis Staunton is China Correspondent of The Irish Times

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