HONG KONG, Sept 25 (AFP) - Pro-democracy activists Wednesday denounced a contentious government proposal to enact anti-subversion laws in Hong Kong, vowing to block their passage in order to safeguard freedoms in the territory.
Activists claimed proposals to make secession, subversion and sedition and treason a crime against the state would make it easier for authorities to clampdown on them in their fight for greater democratic rights in China.
Frank Lu, who heads the Information Centre on Human Rights and Democratic Movement in China said the law was "worrying and totally unnecessary" and was "targeting organisations and dissidents.”
"The proposals are vague since they do not clarify what constitutes a crime against the state and the central government. We will ask legislators to block it," said Lu.
Kan Hung-cheung, a spokesman for the Falungong spiritual group which is banned in China but legal in Hong Kong, slammed the proposed legislation as being part of a "plot" by Chinese president Jiang Zemin "to expand the persecution of the group."
"No matter how the government explains it, it is targetting us," said Kan, who vowed to stop the proposals becoming law.
Leung Kwok-hung, another activist who has been calling for an end to one-man rule in China, said: "Not only does it affect us, but all the people in Hong Kong."
"We must educate the people to stop its passage" into law, he said.
Szeto Wah, who heads the Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movement in China established in the aftermath of the brutal 1989 crackdown of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, said: "We shall not change our ways just out of fear. We shall fight on."
However, Security secretary Regina Ip attempted to sweep away such fears.
Speaking on a local radio program, Ip said: "People and groups are welcome to send in their views... and this includes the human rights organisations" as long as the groups had no connection to relevant groups on the mainland.
Under the Basic Law -- the territory's constitution since the 1997 handover from British to Chinese rule -- Hong Kong is obliged to enact laws banning treason, sedition, subversion, and theft of state secrets.
Major Hong Kong newspaper's Wednesday urged the public to engage in deep discussion of the proposals, which will be submitted to law makers early next year at the end of a three-month consultation period.
The English-language South China Morning Post said: "Those who care about preserving civil liberties in Hong Kong should pore through the document to make sure they will not be unnecessarily reduced by the eventual legislation."
The Apple Daily claimed the consultation paper was fraught with "traps".
If the central government in Beijing believed the Falungong was becoming a threat to national security, instead of branding it an "[slanderous term omitted]", organisers of the local faction of the group would also become offenders, it said.
"Such a proposal will mean the direct importation of the mainland laws which give Beijing authorities the right to do whatever it likes toward organisations it found unacceptable," it said. [..]
The proposed maximum punishment for the most serious offence is life imprisonment.
http://www.ptd.net/webnews/wed/cx/Qhongkong-subversion.R3QT_CSP.html
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