ARTICLE 19 and The Hong Kong Journalists Association
4.8 PUBLIC ENTERTAINMENT
Hong Kong's theatre censorship legislation, the Places of Public Entertainment Ordinance3 contains various serious restrictions on freedom of expression. The contentious provisions of the law have recently undergone a review by the administration's Recreation and Culture Branch, however, and its thinking on possible amendments to bring it into line with the Bill of Rights were reported in June 1992."
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The primary design of this legislation is to regulate by licence the location as well as the type or kind of public entertainment which takes place in the territory. An act of public entertainment is widely defined in the Ordinance to cover everything from concerts, stage plays and other similar performances, to lectures, story-telling, exhibitions of pictures, and even of abnormal persons or animals. The only notable absences are "cinematographic displays", or films, the regulations for which were transferred from this Ordinance to the new Film Censorship Ordinance in 1988.
Controls on public entertainment are presently exercised through a dual licensing system. A general licence, first, is required for the location of the entertainment. This is a standard precaution to ensure a venue meets safety requirements: assuming there are no objections from building or fire authorities, a licence is a formality.39 A separate permit must be obtained, under Section 8(1), from the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA) before one can "advertise, present or carry on any public entertainment". TELA is empowered to examine the form and content of the event before a licence is given.
Of special concern is the absolute discretion conferred on the Commissioner of TELA to grant a permit: he may do so "either generally or in any particular case as may appear to him expedient". Section 8(2) consolidates this extraordinary power by giving the Commissioner the authority "as he may think fit" to cancel any permit he has granted, or otherwise impose any condition on any permit.
There are, notably, no statutory guidelines on how the Commissioner should exercise these considerable powers of prior censorship, in contrast for example with the Film Censorship Ordinance, controversial though its guidelines are. The Commissioner could withhold a permit because of proposed nudity on the stage, as he once indicated he might do in a dispute with
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Places of Public Entertainment Ordinance (Cap 172), enacted in its present form in 1919, with latest revisions in 1989 repealing film censorship regulations which were transferred to the Film Censorship Ordinance.
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"Censorship powers may be reduced", South China Morning Post, 22 June 1992.
39
Johannes Chan, "Freedom of Expression: Censorship and Obscenity", in Raymond Wacks (ed.) Civil Liberties in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988), 208.
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