XN000022-1995-07-19 — Page 55

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"This means that measures which would be too restrictive and would infringe on freedom of expression would not be pursued unless there are strong public interests for so doing," he stated.

For example, to address the concerns of the publication industry that the compulsory use of opaque wrappers on all indecent articles is too restrictive, Mr So said the Government now agreed to require only those articles, the cover designs or packaging of which were indecent, to be put in opaque wrappers. Indecent articles with cover designs or packaging which are not indecent shall use transparent wrappers.

"These wrappers serve a very important function, i.e. clearly identifying the articles as indecent thereby alerting both the vendors and the prospective buyers to their contents," he said.

Mr So also paid tribute to the Judiciary for agreeing to make changes to the Obscene Articles Tribunal (OAT) to make its operation more transparent and its classifications more readily understood by the community.

The Judiciary had agreed to the following changes:

increasing the minimum number of adjudicators from two to four at full hearings to review the interim classification of articles, or to reconsider previously classified articles; however, for interim hearings and for full hearings to determine the obscenity and decency of articles referred to the OAT by other courts, the minimum number of adjudicators will remain at two;

disqualifying an adjudicator who sat at an interim hearing from sitting again as a member of the Tribunal at a full hearing to review the classification of the same article: and

requiring the OAT to identify at both interim and full hearings the offending part(s) of an article which give rise to an "obscene" or "indecent" classification; this piece of information will be filed together with the article concerned in the repository of the Obscene Articles Tribunal for public information.

"The Judiciary will be taking steps to substantially enlarge the panel of adjudicators," Mr So said: "It will also ensure that when enlarging the panel, more female adjudicators will be appointed to achieve a better balance of the sexes."