HONG KONG

Human Rights Developments

China played hardball in its continuing dispute with Hong Kong Gov. Chris Patten over his modest proposals for legislative reform. Beijing's determination to win the greatest degree of control over Hong Kong, even prior to its legal resumption of sovereignty in 1997, underscored both the urgency of legal reform to more firmly secure the future observance of human rights, and the colonial government's lack of progress in this area.

At the end of 1992, Chinese officials hurled bitter personal invective against Governor Patten and threatened to set up "a new kitchen" or a parallel government for Hong Kong if his proposals were acted upon. Not until the governor published his proposals before the Legislative Council in April did Beijing agree to resume talks on the reforms, but little progress resulted. The governor in his annual policy speech in October suggested that the time left for reaching a mutual agreement was near an end, raising the prospect of further confrontation in 1994.

The government's pro-reform stance was tarnished somewhat in July, when Governor Patten argued that there was no need for anindependent human rights commission, as called for by the Legislative Council. Proponents had argued that it was necessary to investigate official practices that might be in violation of the Bill of Rights, particularly as the cost of litigation in Hong Kong (where losers are liable for all fees and costs) greatly inhibits challenges through the courts.

Even so, many laws have been challenged under the Bill of Rights since it came into effect in 1991, in particular criminal laws that placed the burden of proof on the defendant. In October 1993, two activists who were arrested in June 1992 for breaking through a police cordon during a picket of the New China News Agency (Xinhua) office-China's de facto governmental presence-challenged their conviction by questioning the legality of police restrictions on peaceful assemblies.

China, which had opposed the Bill of Rights from the start, continued to hint that it would alter the legal landscape when it resumed control. In 1993 it unilaterally created the Preliminary Working Committee, a group that was to lay the groundwork for the eventual transfer of power, and one which was widely perceived as China's alternative to cooperating with the British. Simon Li Fook-sean, a co-convener of the committee's legal sub-group, suggested in September that the committee consider drafting laws to prohibit subversion against China. He also went on record in September as criticizing the Bill of Rights's supremacy over other Hong Kong laws, stating, "If we did scrap the Bill of Rights, the Basic Law, common law and all the ordinary ordinances would sufficiently protect human rights in Hong Kong. If people don't believe that, it's because they lack faith."

Precisely because they lacked faith in China's commitment to human rights, many Hong Kong legislators and nongovernmental organizations focused attention in 1993 on the government's failure to amend or repeal existing laws that were in conflict with the guarantees of the Bill of Rights. Some of the laws identified included provisions on censorship, police powers to license public demonstrations or compel evidence from journalists, and the Official Secrets Act. The government did, however, propose an amendment to the Television Ordinance that would remove the powers of executive authorities to revoke a television license on security grounds and to regulate the political content of programs. Legislators also decried the government's failure to introduce laws on sexual discrimination or freedom of information, and prepared to draft their own.

A new urgency infused concern over the future protection of press freedom when another Hong Kong journalist was arrested in China in September. Yang Xi of Ming Pao was accused of "espionage regarding state secrets on banking" because of an article about possible changes in interest rates. On October 2, a Chinese woman named Gao Yu was detained and accused of leaking state secrets for providing information to Hong Kong journalists. These arrests followed the 1992 arrest of Hong Kong writer Leung Wai-man, who had published a speech by China's Communist Party leader Jiang Zemin a week before it was given. Wu Shishen, a journalist with the New China News Agency who gave her the speech, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

The treatment of Vietnamese asylum-seekers detained in Hong Kong continued to pose grave human rights problems, even as Hong Kong authorities scrambled to comply with China's wish that the detention centers be emptied before 1997.

Screening for refugee status remained flawed, and Asia Watch was again obliged to intercede on behalf of rejected individuals at serious risk of persecution. In June, a Hong Kong court delivered a stinging indictment of the screening system, ordering reconsideration of the case of two Vietnamese, due to the government's failure to read back to them their immigration interview for completeness and accuracy, or to consider evidence of persecution they had proffered. Toward year's end, fewer than 3,000 of the approximately 35,000 Vietnamese asylum-seekers detained in Hong Kong remained to be screened, and the vast majority of the rest, who had been screened, had been rejected under flawed procedures. The government had appealed the court's decision.

The policy of incarcerating asylum-seekers also came under challenge in 1993. In mid-year, the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention began consideration of a complaint filed by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights and the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children on behalf of all detained Vietnamese. In July, damages of over $25,000 were awarded to the first seven of 111 plaintiffs in the Boat 101 case, in which a court had previously ruled that the government illegally detained persons intercepted in 1989 en route to Japan.

The severely overcrowded detention centers for Vietnamese, often dominated by criminal gangs, were the site of yet more assaults and rapes. The overall atmosphere of intimidation and violence worsened as the Hong Kong government and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) cut back services such as education and psychological counseling, and began systematically transferring asylum-seekers between camps, both to consolidate detention centers and to destabilize established communities in order to encourage people to volunteer to return to Vietnam. In May, tensions were so high in the Whitehead Detention Centre over a plan to transfer 4,000 detainees to a different section that the then-UNHCR chief of mission, Robert Van Leeuwen, made a personal visit. During the visit, asylum-seekers explained that every transfer put them at the mercy of criminal gangs, who would use violence to assert control and extort the transferred people. At the conclusion of Van Leeuwen's speech, in which he declined to address these concerns and instead focused on voluntary repatriation, three men slashed their stomachs in protest and had to be hospitalized.

The preoccupation with boosting the flagging numbers of volunteers for repatriation led the Hong Kong government, with the agreement of the UNHCR, to close off alternative sources of information to the incarcerated Vietnamese. In June, the government rejected a proposal from nongovernmental organizations for a forum on current conditions in Vietnam to be held in the detention centers; both Asia Watch and Amnesty International had been invited as participants. The government said the forum "could be counter-productive" given Asia Watch's past criticismof the government's policies. Early in 1993, Freedom, the premier news and commentary journal edited by detained Vietnamese was closed. UNHCR refused to reauthorize the magazine, citing lack of resources despite offers of financing and technical assistance from Hong Kong corporations and professionals; the journal's independence in publishing refugee views, however, was widely believed to be the real reason for its closure.

The Right To Monitor

Hong Kong generally respected human rights monitoring and advocacy, but the prognosis as 1997 drew near was uncertain. One possible harbinger of problems to come was the refusal of eighteen of Hong Kong's top law firms to accept as clients Martin Lee and Szeto Wah, two legislators and pro-democracy activists who were regularly reviled by China. Lee and Szeto sought to sue Simon Li Fook-sean of China's Preparatory Working Committee for defamation when he said in mid-July that the pair were unfit to remain in the legislature because they had urged runs on Chinese banks in 1989, after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

A similar problem that received growing attention was the frequent self-censorship the Hong Kong media practiced on topics sensitive to China. Although the colonial government used its broad powers of censorship infrequently, China systematically monitored Hong Kong journalists, punishing those it found irritating with denial of access to the mainland, or as described above, with arrest and imprisonment.

One of the notable areas where the Hong Kong government restricted media access during 1993 was the detention centers for Vietnamese. In April, the government opened files more than thirty years old to public inspection, and permitted residents to check personal files it held on them, but only with regard to information that was provided by the individual.

U.S. Policy

The Clinton administration supported the reform plans of Governor Patten, saying on March 30 in a report to Congress required under the U.S. Hong Kong Policy Act that the reforms were consistent with the Basic Law. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Assistant Secretary of State for Asia and the Pacific Winston Lord also gave support for the plans, although Lord told the Senate on March 31 that the U.S. should stay out of negotiations between Britain and China over greater democracy.

Patten visited Washington from May 2 to May 8. The official purpose of his visit was to urge the U.S. to extend Most Favored Nation status to China without conditions, as Hong Kong would be hurt by withdrawal of MFN.

The Work of Asia Watch

Asia Watch was particularly concerned by the treatment of Hong Kong journalists as a harbinger of increased restrictions on freedom of the press when Hong Kong reverts to Chinese control in 1997. It continued to monitor the situation of Vietnamese refugees in Hong Kong.