Media Reports
The law is designed to protect China’s national security. Human rights and pro-democracy groups have said China could use the new laws
to suppress freedoms inherited from British rule, as well as to ban groups –
such as the religious group Falun Gong – it considers a threat.
A Hong Kong man arrested for carrying Falun Gong materials into mainland
China faces trial there Friday, according to fellow members of the spiritual
group who worry authorities will make an example of him.
Mr Goff asked concerning whether
the
Falun Gong would be banned under the new laws, and if calling for an
independent Taiwan would be a crime. He said he had been assured neither would occur.
Shorn of its linguistic niceties, it lays down that any organization of which Beijing disapproves on security grounds will be proscribed in Hong Kong. That could, for instance, mean that the Falun Gong movement, which the central government has been persecuting remorselessly, could be outlawed in the SAR.
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has grave concerns about the Hong
Kong government’s consultation document “Proposals to Implement Article 23
of the Basic Law” that was released for a three-month consultation period
on Sept. 24, 2002.
BEIJING(Reuters) – If knowledge is power, then Luo Gan has the
potential to be the mightiest man in China.
CHINA’S COMMUNIST leadership has spent the past few days bombarding the
country’s long-suffering population, and anyone in the outside world who
will listen, with skull-numbing speeches about the supposed
philosophical
breakthrough of President Jiang Zemin.
Jiang Zemin has never been famous for his modesty. But in his farewell
speech to his party comrades last Friday, when he reviewed his 13 years
at
the helm of China’s ruling Communist Party, his rhetoric was
particularly
florid.
China’s roaring industrial economy, its burgeoning consumer class,
and greater individual freedoms of movement, for example, now present an
undeniable veneer of openness. However, dissent continues to be swiftly
crushed as the recent brutal crackdowns on the Falun Gong attest.
News reports on the congress by Canadian, German, Finnish and Hong Kong television agencies, all intended for home audiences, were blocked as they were beamed out of China, reporters said. The footage showed protests in Tibet, practitioners of the Falun Gong and other politically sensitive material.
