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5.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
The Urban Council has never concerned itself with what are displayed or sold at the newsstands.
It is not that the Urban Council does not have the power to supervise the news vendors, but it has neglected its duties to do so.
HONG KONG URBAN COUNCIL
Public Health and Urban Services Ordinance. We have been working very hard in protecting public hygiene, for example, we pay a lot of attention to food hygiene and public hygiene, but I think public hygiene should include what I call moral hygiene as mentioned in the speech of Mr. CHAN. I think we should also protect the mental lives of our citizens, so that they will not be polluted by objectionable publications.
6. There is no by-law governing the sale of objectionable publications by the news vendors in the present Public Health and Urban Services Ordinance, Cap. 132.
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8.
9.
The Urban Council, restricted by its terms of reference, has no powers of direct supervision over the publishers and the printers. Being the statutory licensing authority, the Urban Council should take full responsibility to supervise the news vendors.
If the Urban Council does take up the responsibility to supervise the news vendors, it is to provide good services for the protection of the young and of public interest. It is by no means directed against the news vendors.
10. I am duty-bound to raise the motion and have no intention of seeking personal political publicity. May God bear witness to that.
My respectable colleagues, whether you support or object to the motion, or take a neutral stand, I have no doubt that you are all wise people who can make a clear distinction between right and wrong and have a sense of responsibility. With these words, may I earnestly ask for your support of the following motion and of its spirit, in the interest of the Council and for the protection of the young people:
'RESOLVED that the Market and Street Traders Select Committee be empowered to have the discretion to revoke or suspend the licence of a newspaper hawker being convicted of selling pornographic or objectionable publications within the meaning of the "Objectionable Publications Ordinance Cap. 150" and that if necessary, to amend the relevant by-law accordingly.'
Mr. Chairman, I beg to move.
MR. EDMUND CHOW seconded (in Cantonese):--Mr. Chairman, I second Mr. Joseph CHAN's motion based on several reasons. First of all, generally speaking, the Urban Council has a responsibility to carry out the duty set down in our ordinances and we should have the power to set down regulations controlling the operations of our newspaper vendors. For example, we can stop our newspaper vendors from selling some items or from providing some services. We have a lot of regulations for our hawkers and so I think we can stop our newspaper vendors from selling these objectionable publications. This is only logic and I think this falls within our scope of work and we do have the responsibility to carry out the provisions in the ordinances.
I would like to raise several points to support me. First, the Urban Council should abide by the law and not allow the sale of these pornographic publications. Talking about the sale of these publications by our newspaper hawkers, one point is because of these magazines they are causing obstruction in our street and main roads. The newspapers will not take up so much space but if they are selling a lot of these magazines, they will spread these magazines out and they will need more space and that will cause obstruction to pedestrians. We are giving out licences for the sale of newspapers; magazines are not defined as newspapers. Up to now we still do not have a very clear legal definition of newspapers, and as a matter of practice we have been allowing licensed newspaper hawkers to sell magazines together with newspapers.
If we want to reduce these cases of obstruction caused by newspaper hawkers, and if we want to introduce deterrent effects to the pornographic publication publishers, I think we can have a clear definition of newspapers. According to the Public Hygiene Ordinance, there is no provision saying the moral hygiene also falls within our jurisdiction, but the ordinance does imply that this has something to do with public health. Now if we decide that it has something directly to do with public health, then I think the Urban Council should at least bear some responsibility and we do not want to introduce future criticisms saying that the Urban Council has not been doing anything. I think it is about time for us to take the initiative and we should not wait until the magistrates criticize the Urban Council or wait until our citizens criticize the Urban Council for not taking any proper action.
Why do we have such a motion and such request? Presently, the Markets & Street Traders Select Committee has the power to suspend or cancel licences if the licensees have violated the regulations under the Public Health and Urban Services Ordinance. Of course, no-one's licence will be cancelled because he is selling objectionable publications; we do not have such provision under the ordinance and under our licensing regulations, we have not clearly indicated that it is a violation if you sell these objectionable publications.
Personally, I think this motion is a reasonable motion, because we hope that the Markets & Street Traders Select Committee should be given the power to do something and then within the select committee, the members should discuss the details. Today the motion has raised one main principle and I think the details could be left to the select committee members. I think we need to agree on the principle and unless members present opposed the principle, we should pass a motion and let the select committee discuss the details.
The motion only talks about giving power to the Markets & Street Traders Select Committee to judge on those matters and to control the activities of our newspaper vendors, and we are not asking the newspaper vendors to decide on the content of the magazines that they are selling. If the concerned authority or the magistrates decide that certain magazines can be classified as objectionable, then the Market & Street Traders
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