ARTICLE 19 and The Hong Kong Journalists Association
office-bearing representative office for Asian student unions), and the Center for the Progress of Peoples (CPP, a Catholic publishing and labour advocacy group), to name a few.
Much of the funding for the majority of these groups is internationally sourced, and a number of them have been, and continue to be, critical of the Chinese government, particularly since the violent events of 1989.
Article 23 also clearly intends to prohibit local political parties from having international links which might somehow have a bearing on political events in Hong Kong, or which otherwise might threaten China. The kind of law that could emerge under the SAR might prohibit or restrict even the most innocuous association, or even communication, between local political parties and those abroad - cven possibly between parties China itself recognizes and has normal relations with. However, it is more likely that any such law would target contacts or ties between local and foreign parties which China sees to be threatening or subversive to its authority, whether in Hong Kong or in China. One example would be the ties or contact a party such as the United Democrats of Hong Kong (UDHK), a liberal party which China opposes, might have with the Federation for a Democratic China (FDC), the exiled dissident organization.
2.8 TURMOIL AND THE DECLARATION OF AN EMERGENCY
The Standing Committee of the NPC, according to a provision in Article 18 of the Basic Law, may declare a state of emergency in the Hong Kong SAR in the event there is "turmoil ... which endangers national unity or security and is beyond the control of the government of the Region". The Standing Committee may make such a decision quite independently, without a request from the SAR government, and on doing so is then empowered to apply "the relevant national laws in the Region", martial law being one obvious choice.
Much like its counterpart "subversion", the concept of "turmoil" is an unknown quantity in the legal language of Hong Kong. On the mainland, though, the term has a strong political and quasi-legal currency and has been used on numerous occasions as a justification or pretext for the suppression of large-scale and often peaceful dissenting action against the state and the Communist Party. The Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, for example, characterized the causes of the protests of 1989 as having being the result of "a very small number of people first stag[ing] turmoil, which virtually developed into counter-revolutionary rebellion".
The International Commission of Jurists was particularly concerned by the latitude of this power. It was one of a number of important areas, the ICJ noted, where China had failed to comply with the obligations it had accepted upon signing the Joint Declaration.15 This power, it said, is "clearly inconsistent" with para 3(11) and Annex I Article XII of the Joint Declaration, which provide that the "maintenance of public order in the [SAR] shall be the
15
Supra, note 3, Chapter XIV at 110.
16
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