Billed as a pillar of the city's success, the freedoms of Hong Kong people have been viewed as sacrosanct since the idea of the city's return to China emerged on the drawing board in the early 1980s. But as the handover to the autocratic communist regime drew near, those cherished rights began to look fragile. And never more so than in February 1997 with the high-handed scrapping of 25 pieces of legislation in full or in part by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the national legislature in Beijing. Among them were legislative efforts by the British colonial administration to enhance civil liberties.
Also among the casualties was the amended Public Order Ordinance, by which action the NPC effectively restored a licensing requirement for processions, and lowered the number of participants in protests from 50 to 30 and for rallies without notification from 30 to 20.
In what was seen as a major blow to the city's human rights protection, the NPC also repealed Articles 2(3), 3 and 4 of the Bill of Rights, stripping the law of its overriding status which was put in place to prevent the legislature from passing any law that went against the provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Democrats and activists cried foul over the loss of what was seen as a crucial safeguard against intimidation by a sovereign authority notorious for its poor human rights record.
But if the seeds for human rights abuse were sown before the handover, they do not seem to have flourished in the 10 years since.
A glance at the number of public processions and notified public meetings in the adjacent table shows that except for last year, Hong Kong has held more than 1,000 public processions and meetings annually since 1997. Such public rallies were so frequent that The Washington Post gave the city the label of 'city of protests'.
There was no massive suppression of the opposition in any blatant form. The kind of barefaced curbs on free speech known on the mainland have not appeared in Hong Kong.
