very fully debated in the Legislative Council on 11 March, when the implications of the measures for freedom of speech in the territory were considered in detail. Both bills were thereafter passed by a large majority of the Council.
Your letter also raises a number of specific points about the new ordinance which I shall take one by one:
(a) The present ordinance might be misused some time in
the future
Neither we nor the Hong Kong Government believe this will be so. The Joint Declaration provides clear guarantees of the maintenance of press freedom and other freedoms of expression after 1997. Also the new provision in the Public Order Ordinance itself includes considerable legal safeguards against abuse: a considerable burden of proof lies upon the Hong Kong Attorney General, whose prior consent must be obtained before a prosecution is initiated. It would also be an adequate defence for the accused to establish that he or she had reasonable grounds to believe the news was true when it was published. All of these strike me as reasonable and adequate safeguards against abuse of the measure in the future.
(b) The difficulty of defining "false news
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There may well be cases when it is difficult to establish that news is false. If that is a difficulty it would of course work in favour of the accused, since the prosecution would be unable to establish beyond reasonable doubt an essential element of the offence. But there could well be circumstances where it would be possible to prove falsity beyond reasonable doubt.
(c) The burden of proof is on the accused
This is not the case. As with every other offence, the prosecution needs to establish beyond all reasonable doubt the various elements of its case, namely that news was published by the accused, that the news was false and that it was likely to cause alarm or disturb public order. Even if the prosecution succeeds in proving this, it is still open to the accused to establish, on the lesser standard of the balance of probability, that he had reason to believe the news was true, and to be acquitted on that ground. I do not believe this can realistically be said to cast an undue burden of proof on the accused. It is not unusual to require the defence to