Hong Kong officials will consult Beijing before drafting controversial local legislation against treason, subversion and sedition, a newspaper report said yesterday.
Officials will review laws in China and other countries against subversion, the stealing of state secrets and political dissent before drafting similar local legislation as required by Hong Kong's mini-constitution, the South China Morning Post reported.
"What if there are people who set up a group to push for independence of Tibet or Taiwan? At present, we don't have any laws to deal with it," said a Hong Kong official whom the paper did not identify.
The Basic Law, the mini-constitution adopted after Hong Kong's reversion from British to Chinese rule in 1997, stipulates the territory will "on its own" adopt laws to prohibit any act of treason, secession, subversion, or the theft of state secrets -- without defining those crimes.
Local democracy campaigners fear modeling the local laws after China's national anti-subversion legislation would severely compromise Hong Kong's freedom.
China often jails citizens critical of the government and its policies on vague charges that they had compromised national security.
But one analyst told the Post that consultations with Beijing were not a cause for great concern.
"I anticipate the Chinese government will not impose its own standards on [Hong Kong]. If they wanted to do so, they could have done it ... by making their own subversion law one of the national laws in the Basic Law," said Lau Siu-kai, a professor at Hong Kong's Chinese University
Hong Kong security officials did not immediately return phone calls from journalists seeking comment early yesterday.
The Post said the government has not scheduled consultations with Beijing, but will likely table the proposed law in the legislature for discussion this fall.
Hong Kong officials have been cautious in dealing with the sensitive issue. The territory has been guaranteed a high degree of autonomy and civil liberties since its return to China under Beijing's "one country, two systems" formula.
Unlike in the mainland, protests in Hong Kong against Beijing and the local government remain legal and frequent.
Hong Kong has kept most of its pre-handover legislation and British-style judiciary, but also adopted some Chinese laws.
In an editorial yesterday, the Post said Hong Kong "must address the issues of state security," but also warned that it "must take care to do so in ways consistent with its own definitions of these crimes -- rather than Beijing's."
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