Tribune foreign correspondent

Published July 2, 2003

HONG KONG -- In a rare anti-government rally that reflected concerns about Hong Kong's struggling economy and anger at local politicians, more than 350,000 residents marched through the streets Tuesday to oppose a sweeping anti-subversion bill that critics fear would erode freedoms granted under mainland China's rule.

The display of deep distrust of China's future intentions as Hong Kong's overlord came on the sixth anniversary of the city's hand-over to China.

Hong Kong and China, with their different political cultures, are still adjusting to a unique arrangement in which Beijing controls Hong Kong but allows it a high degree of autonomy through the principle of "one country, two systems."

The relationship affects not just Hong Kong's future identity and prosperity but also whether Taiwan considers a closer relationship with China.

The divisions between Hong Kong and China were evident Tuesday, with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao giving an anniversary speech in the morning that ignored the national security law controversy. He then returned to Beijing, avoiding the afternoon spectacle of an enormous crowd wending its way from Victoria Park toward the gleaming skyscrapers of downtown.

Law defended

[...]

The organized, peaceful rally represented the largest protest in Hong Kong since a crowd of 1 million thronged the streets in 1989 to protest the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Protesters sang "We Shall Overcome" in Cantonese and wore T-shirts and waved banners that decried the national security law, known as Article 23. Some carried posters showing Hong Kong's chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa, being slapped in the face with a pie and called for his resignation.

Many of the demonstrators said they recognized that such a protest could never take place on the mainland and they feared that Article 23's passage could impede or suppress other protests.

"We can still take to the streets, but I'm sure in the future this freedom will be taken from us," said Dickson Ng, a 38-year-old printer, who brought his two children to attend the rally.

The law will give the pro-Beijing government here seemingly broad powers to define acts of subversion and other crimes against the People's Republic of China that many people worry are similar to Beijing's authoritarian perspective on how to govern its territory and quash dissent. It will permit the government to ban any organization on "national security" grounds.

[...]. The proposed law is assured of passage by Hong Kong's legislature this summer, raising the question of how much effect a politically awakened Hong Kong public can have.

The Roman Catholic Church in Hong Kong, human-rights activists, opposition lawmakers and many in the streets Tuesday said they feared the law would leave any potential critic of China vulnerable to arrest.

Potential targets could include Hong Kong-based political activists who have the freedom to report on human-rights abuses on the mainland; members of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China, and even the Catholic Church in Hong Kong, because it supports underground churches in China.

"The wording is very ambiguous," said Bishop Joseph Zen, leader of Hong Kong's 250,000 Catholics and an outspoken critic of China. "Anyone who criticizes the government, the party, even without calling for a violent revolution, can be accused of these crimes."

The law contains a provision against "seditious publications" and a section on subversion that could be construed as attacking free press and free speech. Some fear that Hong Kong's bankers could be at risk for publishing a damning economic report on China.

Emily Lau, an opposition lawmaker, described Article 23 as "absolutely crazy" and "absolutely reprehensible" and fretted that it will "destroy the firewall that separates Hong Kong and China."

[...]

Hong Kong's legislature is not fully elected by the public, and its chief executive essentially is appointed by Beijing.

"If I trusted the government," said marcher Dorothy Au, a 29-year-old accountant, "I wouldn't be here."

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