The delegation held a press conference yesterday morning before meeting Government officials at which Mr. Marks said the legislation was a contamination of press freedom.
A delegation member, and a member of the House of Lords, Lord McGregor, said he was surprised at the haste in which the bill was passed.
"This particular restrictive power is not a matter which only affects Hongkong, it affects the free world," Lord McGregor said.
"And moreover, it would be in my view wrong to make this sort of bequest to the incoming Chinese Government in 10 years time.
"All over the world, people take Britain as upholder of freedom and liberty and freedom of speech-and people can- not dissociate Hongkong from Britain in this matter."
Lord McGregor said if China supported the passage of the bill, it would be very difficult to have it repealed. But he said it was Britain's responsibility, not China's, to administer Hongkong until 1997.
He said the Hongkong administration had the opportunity to change the ordinance.
"In a democratic regime, the administration always has power to admit they may have been in error," Lord McGregor said.
He said there was provision in the Joint Declaration that the freedom of human rights, including the right to a free press would be retained in Hongkong even after 1997.
Another member, Mr. George Chaplin, a retired editor from Honolulu warned that press freedom "once surrendered, rarely recovered.”
Mr. Chaplin said the legislation was a reflection of the Government's lack of faith in people's abilities to make in- telligent judgments about the flow of information.
THE JAKARTA POST, Saturday, June 20, 1987
Singapore urged
to lift curtailment
of press freedom
SINGAPORE (Bernama): The private World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC), representing 32 journalistic organiza- tions in the world, said here Friday that they will appeal to world public opinion through the United Nations and other forums, to get Singapore and Hong Kong to lift their respec- tive curtailment of press freedom.
"Freedom of the press belongs less to the press than to the people," the WPFC said in a statement issued by its chair- man, Leonard H. Marks, who had led a four-man delegation to meet Singapore's information minister here. The other members are Lord McGregor of Durris (of London), George Chaplin (Honolulu), and Cushrow R. Irani (Calcutta).
Chaplin said the timing of their visit here was decided by his ability to be present in the island Republic, though they held the press conference in the same hotel where the ASEAN foreign ministers are meeting their counterparts from major industrial countries—Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, the United States and the European Com- munities.
They said they were concerned with the "principles" of press freedom and human rights in the action taken against the press in Singapore and Hong Kong.
Singapore has limited the circulation of the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Time magazine for articles written
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