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EDITORIAL: Bad priorities are the real obscenity

The Hong Kong public learned something this week that may shock people even outside Asia: Bored young movie stars who have a libido and know how to operate a camera sometimes combine the two for their personal amusement.

It is difficult to believe that many Hong Kong men were not quietly in awe of Edison Chen's (陳冠希) string of starlet conquests, especially in the light of surveys that regularly place Hong Kong near the bottom of sexual satisfaction indices.

Yet this silly tale of projected sexual ego and unsecured computers has now blown up into an international news story as prosecutions commence over the distribution of "obscene" materials.

The only obscene thing about this affair was that Hong Kong and international media almost completely ignored the simultaneous release of Ching Cheong (程翔), a Straits Times reporter based in Hong Kong who had been jailed in China on trumped-up charges of spying for Taiwan.

The Edison Chen that groveled at Thursday's press conference was not a man involved in obscenity; he was a coward who didn't have the guts to tell the truth: He enjoyed photographing himself and his female companions, and would have continued to do so had his hard disk not been stolen and ransacked. His pleas for people to learn from his experience and his apology for not being a role model were as ridiculous as they were craven.

The curious thing about the fuss is that Hong Kong has traditionally been a progressive place in terms of sex, erotica and pornography. Now, under indirect Chinese rule, the maxim that political tyranny must extend to public expressions of sexuality has been reinvigorated as Hong Kong cracks down on the most minor sexual infractions in the press, and particularly on the medium that China fears above all others: the Internet.

Back in Taiwan, police have arrested a man trying to make hay out of the pictorial material taken from Chen's computer. But the police reasoning for the raid on that unlucky Internet user deserves comment.

Rather than target the man over the commercial misuse of "copyright" material, the prosecutors want to jail him on indecency charges, which smacks of professional nest-feathering through the prosecution of victimless crimes. What about the real online crooks -- sexual predators, pedophiles, organized crime activity and piracy groups?

Taiwan has been heading down the same progressive road that Hong Kong now seems to have forsaken, as evidenced by the release of films such as Shortbus, 9 Songs and A Wayward Cloud -- each containing unsimulated sexual material -- in theaters and on DVD. This suggests that Government Information Office (GIO) film classifiers have warmed to the idea of artistic and dramatic context in handling adult material.

Meanwhile, Taiwanese police are threatening to prosecute anyone who downloads any image whatsoever of sexual activity, a futile strategy that infringes upon the private lives of ordinary people -- and one that would be selectively enforced. There is a clear and growing disjuncture between the civilian sensibilities of the GIO's public servants and the prudish legalism of the police and prosecutors.

Forget clumsy images of Edison Chen romancing Hong Kong "talent." We would prefer Taiwanese police offer a reason why they haven't prosecuted anyone yet for "downloading" and enjoying Ang Lee's (李安) intense sexual thriller Lust, Caution.
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