Urgent Business: Hong Kong, Freedom of Expression and 1997
A related thread of statutory censorship has been designed to restrict or prohibit the expression of views that may be antagonistic or offensive to China. As a strategy of appeasement towards its more powerful neighbour, again intended to protect British colonial interests, such legislation today can be found in the Film Censorship Ordinance (see Section 4.6 below).
This chapter identifies and examines a number of laws with provisions that clearly should be reviewed because of legitimate concerns about their compatibility with the right to freedom of expression under Article 16 of the Bill of Rights; or indeed because in other ways they constitute a threat to freedom of expression, and the media, which is inconsistent with the broad promotion of the spirit of Article 16. To await the courts' verdict on their compatibility with the Bill of Rights is an abrogation of a basic and fundamental duty.
The fact that inconsistencies in these laws remain unrepealed and unamended on the statute books raises two key areas of concern. First, unless repealed considerable powers will continue to be available for use after 1997 by China and the appointed SAR executive authorities acting under China's direction. The second has been the authorities' willingness since the events of 1989 selectively to resort to such legislation, their actions contravening freedom of expression and placing the continued observation of the right in considerable jeopardy.
4.1
EMERGENCY POWERS
Almost no other law symbolizes quite so trenchantly as the Emergency Regulations Ordinance the underlying colonial nature of much of Hong Kong's legislation." Enacted in 1922 in response to labour unrest in the territory, the censorship powers under the Ordinance could be described as the cornerstone of colonial censorship policy, and have been used to great effect in the past. The principal provision, Section 2 (1), reads:
On any occasion which the Governor in Council may consider to be an occasion of emergency or public danger he may make any regulations whatsoever which he may consider desirable in the public interest.
The powers conferred on the Governor in Council to declare an emergency are subjective and unilateral. There is no indication in the Ordinance as to the exact meaning of the term
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Although the range of legislation reviewed here represents laws of considerable and obvious importance to the right to freedom of expression, it cannot be exhaustive; there are literally hundreds of laws that need more careful scrutiny in the light of the Bill of Rights.
Emergency Regulations Ordinance (Cap 241), enacted in 1922, and last revised in 1964. Subsidiary legislation regulating the exercise of the Governor in Council's powers during an emergency includes the Emergency (Principal) Regulations (Cap 241/1967), and the Emergency Powers (Extension and Amendment Incorporation) Ordinance (Cap 251/1964).
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