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Following is the transcript of remarks made by the Secretary for Security, Mrs Regina Ip, to the media at the Central Government Offices this (June 20) morning:

Reporter: Mrs Ip, what is your reaction to the US's strong opposition to the legislation of Article 23?

Secretary for Security: We note the concerns. But under Article 23 of the Basic Law, we have a constitutional duty to enact laws on our own to protect national security. We are acting entirely within our autonomy. Basic human rights and freedoms are fully protected under the Basic Law and we will not be putting forward any proposals that conflict with these rights. If you look at the details of our proposals, if you care to look at the fine print, you will find that our proposals are more liberal than a lot of the outdated provisions still on our statutes inherited from the colonial era. In fact our proposals, the detail provisions compare very well with similar provisions in other common law legislation. As regards the specific point raised in the White House statement that our Bill mandates the proscription of certain popular organisations, there is no truth whatsoever in that. Our proscription mechanism is not targeted at any particular organisation and it is not an automatic mechanism for proscription. As regards public interest defence, we have surveyed the statutes of common law jurisdictions and we have not found any such public interest defence. We suspect White House officials, (you know), may not fully comprehend the fine details of all our proposals and we would continue to explain to them.

(Please refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript)

End/Friday, June 20, 2003

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