Macao: Strengthening Human Rights Safeguards
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Amnesty International recommends that Article 40 of the Draft Basic Law be amended to include specifically the provisions of the ICCPR and all other international conventions concerning human rights currently applicable in Macao.
Ratification of the ICCPR and the ICESCR by the Chinese Government would ensure that the Covenants apply to all citizens of the PRC including, eventually, residents of Macao. This measure would constitute a major advance in the protection of human rights in the whole of China. If the PRC ratified the covenants, they would automatically continue to apply to Macao.
Amnesty International recommends that the PRC (including the Macao Special Administrative Region) ratify the Covenants and comply with the reporting procedures provided by each Covenant. In this case, after 1999, each of the periodic reports which the PRC would submit to the Human Rights Committee would include a separate section about the Macao SAR presented by the Macao authorities.
In order to ensure that international human rights treaties ratified by the PRC automatically apply to Macao, Article 138 of the Draft Basic Law should be amended. As currently drafted, Article 138 reads:
The application to the Macao [SAR] of international agreements to which the [PRC] is or becomes a party shall be decided by the Central People's Government, in accordance with the circumstances and needs of the Region and after seeking the views of the government of the Region..."
However, human rights treaties necessarily protect fundamental rights of all individuals, within a country's territory and subject to its jurisdiction, without discrimination. No decision by the Central People's Government in Beijing as to the Covenants' applicability to Macao should be permitted as a precondition to the Covenants applying.
Amnesty International recommends that international human rights treaties be formally excepted from the scope of Article 138 of the Draft Basic Law.
Amending Article 138 as recommended by Amnesty International would also ensure that the Convention against Torture, which currently applies to Macao by virtue of Portugal's ratification, will continue to apply by virtue of China's ratification (see below, Section 4.1).
Amnesty International November 1991
Al Index: ASA 27/01/91
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