1 previously has sought to make the case that Article 19 would be
infringed by censorship of such a purpose. Perhaps not. If I
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it is because Hong Kong is such a free Territory that we can do
5 so in this Council. But does it not hurt my heart even more when
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I realise that we can do this because this is a free place, and yet some of my colleagues don't even seem to realise what they are 8 doing to the basic freedom of expression?
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May I ask a rhetorical question: If the
Administration's position is the correct one, one would expect that other civilised countries would have such a provision, and yet we don't find such a provision in the democratic countries of 13 the world. Why not? Is it because they treasure the freedom 14 of expression much more than we do?
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No answer has been made to a basic point in my speech, Sir, that although there were only three reasons given to justify the retaining of this particular provision, yet we are 18 told quite frankly that once this provision is retained in our
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Statute Books it will be applied to other areas. Is that what the 20 Chief Secretary means? Is that what he means when he says: "Well, 21 it will be confined to a minimum"? "Minimum" means other than the 22 three areas permitted in the covenant.
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Let me now deal with some of the points made by my learned colleagues in the order in which they were made. The
Mr. Stephen Cheong made a rather serious attack on some
26 Members of this Council perhaps he had me in mind that we were 27 sowing seeds of distrust in the Government of Hong Kong. He then went on to say that the fact that for 30 years the scheme had seemed to work smoothly has been "completely overlooked.
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respect to him, the system had indeed been used for 30 years but, now we know, unlawfully. Perhaps the functional constituency from 32 which he hails would allow him to say that that was a perfectly
good scheme. I'm afraid the functional constituency where I come from will not permit me to countenance a blatant breach of the law.
He then says: "Well, there is no serious
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36 complaint lodged by the film industry." A little surprising because