"Letter from Hong Kong" by Secretary for Home Affairs

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Following is the "Letter from Hong Kong" delivered by the Secretary for Home Affairs, Mr David Lan, on Radio Television Hong Kong this (Saturday) morning:

Dear Kenneth,

If you are a regular newspaper reader and TV viewer, you would notice that the subject of human rights have been taking up more print space and air time in recent weeks. There is a good reason for that. Because in exactly six days, many parts of the world will be marking the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But before then, I expect to be asked, not for the first time, "What will the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government do to mark the occasion?"

It seems implicit in the question is the expectation that the Government should do something sensational, or at least very eye-catching, to commemorate the event. If that is the case, my answer would be that we are not planning anything festive or glamorous and certainly there would be no fanfare. But, yes, we shall be doing something meaningful and appropriate befitting the importance and dignity of the occasion. The details of which will be announced by the Home Affairs Bureau shortly.

I wonder, Kenneth, what sort of impression you get from the popular press's coverage of Hong Kong these days. But the fact is that our commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights has remained unwavering since the extension of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights to Hong Kong more than 20 years ago. And since the reunification, the Administration has done more than ever in ensuring that the public is aware of their rights which are now entrenched in the Basic Law, our constitutional document. Hong Kong has an excellent record on human rights comparable to any advanced country or territory in the world.

Provisions of the Basic Law are strong bulwarks against violation of human rights. Since reunification, rights and freedoms of Hong Kong residents have not been curtailed as some of our arch critics had prophesied. On the contrary, we have witnessed a much more willingness on the part of our citizens to exercise their rights. Our records showed that in the first year after reunification, there had been some 1,800 public meetings and processions, averaging five a day, and some 880 societies were registered or exempted from registration under the Societies Ordinance. The Police has not objected once to any applications to hold such public activities.

I never grow tired of pointing out that we do not believe in sporadic publicity blitzes in getting important messages across. We believe in steady, not overly obtrusive but effective public education in addressing important issues such as human rights and the Basic Law.

The announcements of public interest (APIs) that we all see and hear through the television and radio sets are but part of the multi-front civic education campaign that we wage day in and day out.

Every school kid in Hong Kong should be able to tell you of the vast amount of human rights-related teaching materials that we produced for schools in recent years. The current campus atmosphere, one that of heightened social consciousness, that this has brought about is a far cry day from the days when you were a secondary school student in Hong Kong, Kenneth.

I believe the Government's actions speak for themselves in so far as its commitment to human rights is concerned. And a number of positive developments regarding our obligations vis-a-vis several international treaties on human rights further reinforces this commitment. Let me enumerate:

1. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, or CEDAW in short, was extended to Hong Kong in October 1996. The Home Affairs Bureau co-ordinated the compilation of a report on its implementation in Hong Kong. It was submitted to the Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for onward transmission to Beijing. It has been incorporated into China's submission in August to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, the treaty monitoring body for CEDAW and we have made public the section pertaining to the HKSAR. The Committee is expected to examine the report next month. Representatives of the HKSAR Government will attend the hearing as part of the Chinese delegation.

2. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, or ICCPR and ICESCR in short. On November 22, 1997, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing announced that in order to fully realise the "One Country, Two Systems" concept, separate reports on the implementation of the ICCPR and the ICESCR in the HKSAR would be submitted to the United Nations treaty monitoring bodies.

On December 4, 1997, China's Permanent Representative to the United Nations formally notified the United Nations Secretary General that in line with the Joint Declaration and the Basic Law and taking into account the fact that China is not yet a State Party to both covenants, the Chinese Government would entrust its Permanent Mission to the United Nations with transmitting the reports by the HKSAR to the United Nations Secretary General.

In line with our established practice adopted over the years, outlines of topics to be covered under the two reports were issued for public consultation between March 10 and April 15 this year. The Home Affairs Bureau has co-ordinated the compilation of the two reports and will submit the ICCPR report to the MFA Office in about a week and the ICESCR report next February. Once the reports have been submitted to the United Nations, they will be made available to the public. The MFA Office will notify us when the respective treaty monitoring bodies announce their hearing dates. We will then select teams to attend the hearings.

3. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, or CAT, was extended to Hong Kong in December 1992. Again Home Affairs Bureau is co-ordinating the compilation of the report and will submit it to MFA Office for onward transmission to Beijing. It will form a section of China's report to be submitted to the Committee Against Torture, the treaty monitoring body for CAT. Once the metropolitan report is submitted to the United Nations, we shall make public the section pertaining to the HKSAR. Representatives of this Government will attend the hearing of the report as part of the Chinese delegation.

4. Submission of other reports. There is also a reporting obligation under the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) and the International Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). As in the case of the CEDAW and the CAT, Hong Kong's reports under those Conventions will form part of China's "metropolitan" reports. However, we have not yet been asked for contributions under either of them.

Here, I must confess that I am at least a trifle hurt by some unfair comments from certain quarters when their demand to take an active part in the compilation of the various reports were rejected if you consider the length that we took to listen to their views. It's public knowledge that before we put pen to paper, we allow for a generous consultation period for interested parties to submit their views. We even took the initiative of inviting them over so that my staff and I can hear them first hand their comments and suggestions. And if they are still unsatisfied with such avenues of channelling their views, they and all Non Government Organisations are free to submit their views direct to the Treaty Monitoring Bodies should they consider that our reports are defective or deficient in any way. But we simply cannot give in to their demands to perform what is basically a governmental function.

No doubt our situation was put in a more eloquent manner by Professor Rosalyn Higgins, a former member of the Human Rights Committee and now a judge in the International Court of Justice, when she said : "In terms of preparation of the periodic report, I know that some feel that NGOs should have an input into that. It is not a view that I share. I think it is healthy for there to be poachers and for there to be game keepers, and that their roles should not become too mixed. I think it is frankly much more useful for the Government to prepare its report and for the NGOs to say what they want to say about it in the various ways available to them. This is not through any formal standing under the Civil and Political Covenant, but through all the papers and briefings material they can and do make available to Committee members."

All this leads us back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

The unprecedented scale of atrocities and devastation in human and materials terms during the Second World War prompted statesmen of the day to seek some instrument to minimise the likelihood of a recurrence of such horrors that they witnessed around them. Their vision of a world in which basic human decency and the inalienable rights of every individual are given maximum protection gave birth to the Declaration. Although the Declaration has no binding legal effect, I believe its moral authority is no less compelling. While it is purely aspirational, the Declaration's principles have been given substance through the ICCPR and the ICESCR which, as applied to Hong Kong, are enshrined in the Basic Law.

Clearly, the ideals of democracy and personal freedoms in Hong Kong are not only secure under the many layers of protection afforded by legislation, international treaties and the moral force of the Declaration, they are thriving and, some may even say, abused to a certain extent. So it is only fitting that I conclude this letter by quoting from the father of civil disobedience and non-violence, Mahatma Gandhi, who said in his book Non-Violence in Peace and War, published in the same year as the birth of the Declaration, that: "Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having."

Father

December 5, 1998

End/Saturday, December 5, 1998

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