Future Government Pares Down Hong Kong Freedoms

HONG KONG — This colony’s future government pushed ahead with new laws restricting a few of the territory’s freedoms Thursday, though it softened the most controversial clauses in a bow to local and international opposition.

The move was seen as a sign of how incoming leader Tung Chee-hwa would balance the demands of Beijing’s leaders, who insist on having the necessary legal tools to control the politicized territory, and the desires of Hong Kong residents, who do not want to see their freedoms--some granted only in the last few years--fade away.

“There has to be a proper balance between civil liberties and social order,” Tung said Thursday.

The laws, which will take effect July 1, were announced after three weeks of public debate on the proposed changes. The new government will require advance police permission to hold protests, require societies to register with the government and ban foreign support of political groups. The revisions give police the power to grant permits for demonstrations on short notice instead of the proposed week in advance, and they clarify that only political parties will be prohibited from having overseas ties.

Tung retained the notion of “national security”--a term used by China to imprison dissidents--as grounds for banning protests or political groups. It will be used in Hong Kong to silence demands for independence for Taiwan or Tibet, officials said. But Tung sought to avert alarm by adding that the law must be consistent with what is “necessary in a democratic society.”

“We listened very carefully to the views of the Hong Kong people,” Tung said Thursday night, after speaking to a black-tie gathering of the Asia Society. “The people have by and large supported the principles behind the changes.”

During the three-week consultation period, Tung’s office received 5,507 written responses from legal experts, scholars, human rights activists and other people. An aide characterized support as “half and half” and confided that there had been disagreement even within the incoming administration.

“It has been forced on us,” said aide Michael Suen, who presented the revised legislation to the media Thursday. “We are trying to make the best out of a bad situation.”

The proposals resonate of mutual mistrust. Beijing, which will reclaim Hong Kong in 46 days, fears that the democratic territory will be used as a base to undermine its Communist rule. During the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989, funds from Hong Kong and Taiwan sustained the demonstrations for weeks.

In Hong Kong, China’s de facto embassy, the New China News Agency, is the target of frequent protests: Demonstrators marched or camped on its doorstep 165 times last year.

While critics call the laws a step backward, it’s not such a large step. The laws are similar to the strict Societies Ordinance that Britain removed only in 1992 and the Public Order law it repealed in 1995, saying Beijing’s leaders could not be counted on to rule Hong Kong as benevolently as Britain has. Tung, however, rejected earlier suggestions by a Beijing-backed subcommittee to reinstitute sweeping emergency powers for Hong Kong’s leader, or the power to shut down broadcast stations for political reasons.

Gov. Chris Patten, who liberalized the old colonial laws, praised Tung for responding to public reaction, but restated his objection to any changes at all.

“The present laws work perfectly well, and public order in Hong Kong is as good as it is anywhere in the world, and is better than in a great many places,” Patten said Thursday.

Legal scholars have challenged the new ordinances on strictly legal terms. China is allowed to change only laws that clash with the territory’s new constitution, but the incoming government has yet to explain how the previous laws conflict.

And political opponents are sounding alarms. “Mr. Tung is giving a clear message,” said Albert Ho, spokesman for the Democratic Party. The Democrats, who won the most seats in Hong Kong’s legislature and receive substantial funding from overseas supporters, will be hardest hit by the new rules. “He is suggesting that interference from China doesn’t matter.”