TNAG-2225-FCO40-3196-Political-relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-Australia-1991 — Page 22

autocracy, without responsibility for their self-government, be sufficiently right-asserting to uphold these basic rights when they are passed to the control of another autocratic

form of government?

This is

is the

Secondly, ideas of basic rights (whether in a Bill of

Rights or derived from common law principle) depend

In recent times at ultimately on a shared notion of society.

least, this has been of a

been of a democratic society respectful of

individual rights and minority freedoms.

reference point for courts in giving meaning to

in

a Bill of

Rights and in controlling oppressive acts of individuals or

to the justice of the common law. the state, by reference

But to the very end of its colonial phase, Hong Kong has no

This democratic legislature, wholly elected by direct vote.

may itself offend the fundamental notions of human rights law, including as expressed in the International Covenants. Thus, as the Territory enters the PRC, there is no notion of

society, with the legitimacy of democratic acceptance,

which judges of the future can refer in protecting basic

rights. They can, for a time, do so by reference to

principles in the case books resting upon features of British

or Commonwealth societies. But as Hong Kong's association

with the PRC becomes

becomes more intimate, those presumptions may

have declining relevance.

Courts have no

Thirdly, it is essential to recognise that the rule of

law as we know it depends upon a convention of obedience.

armies to enforce their orders against an

obdurate state. They are rendered impotent if an opinionated

Executive Government declines to obey a presence in Hong Kong after 1997 of the People's Liberation

to obey a court order.

The

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