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Mr Howard Young: Thank you Governor. Tomorrow morning it will be exactly one month since I myself and five other legislators handed three letters to the Philippine Consulate asking for a date for us to go down to see the President, to speak to their Parliament and also the Justice Minister, to express our views directly on the case. To date we have not received any sort of reply.
Now, during your discussions with Philippine officials did you get the impression that they had not received our request, or thought it was not necessary, or was it at any time raised that we should be preparing ourselves to get a reply and go soon? Not that we want to add to the Christmas traffic peak season in the Philippines. but perhaps, I would have thought we would at least hope to go some time between Christmas and Chinese New Year.
Governor: We will be happy to remind the Government in the Philippines of the honourable member's request and that of other honourable members. And I hope that that visit can be arranged, if it is necessary, reasonably quickly, but I hope it won't be necessary because I hope that Mr Au and Mr Wong will have their appeal heard
sooner rather than later.
There have, as the honourable member knows, been one or two unfortunate events which have apparently delayed the appeal. But that said, judicial delay is always a cause of very considerable frustration, as anybody will know from reading `Bleak House', or from other events in legal history.
Mr Frederick Fung (in Chinese): Thank you Mr President. A question for the Governor. Sir, regarding the imprisonment of Mr Wei Jingsheng for 14 years, it has a very huge impact on the people of Hong Kong. We are all very worried. Dissenting views with the authority in China has resulted in conflict. I think many people in Hong Kong have dissenting views from that of mainland China and yet Mr Wei has been accused of subversion. I have asked the opinions of some legal professionals and in the common law we don't have the concept of subversion but in Article 23 of the Basic Law we do have a mention of the concept of subversion. Mr Cheung Man- kwong referred to the situation after 1997, when Hong Kong is reverted to China. Have you considered asking China to clearly define what is meant by subversion and how does it relate to the common law?
Governor: On the first point that the honourable member made, I hope that if I don't set out again my thoughts on this particular case, the honourable member won't think it's disrespectful or shows a lack of concern about Mr Wei's position. I think I set out my views in response to the earlier question fairly extensively and I wouldn't want to go on repeating arguments which I feel very strongly.