Hong Kong’s own security law should be ‘forward looking’ to address emerging technology risks, leader John Lee says

Hong Kong Free Press

Hong Kong’s own national security law should be “forward looking” to address emerging risks presented by technology, Chief Executive John Lee has said.

Chief Executive John Lee meets the press after announcing 2023 Policy Address on October 25, 2023. Photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP. — Chief Executive John Lee meets the press. File photo: Kyle Lam/HKFP.

Addressing reporters at a weekly press conference on Tuesday, Lee said the city would use the “most effective means” to conduct legislative work for Article 23, as the city’s own national security legislation is known.

“We must have sufficient consideration so that the proposal is forward-looking and can handle the ever-changing, endless risks that [emerge] possibly because of technology or other new ways,” Lee said in Cantonese.

Under Article 23 of Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the city must enact its own security law to prohibit seven types of offences. They include treason, subversion against the central government and theft of state secrets.

Article 23 stands alone from Beijing’s national security law, which was passed in June 2020 after the 2019 protests and unrest. The security law criminalises secession, subversion, foreign collusion and terrorism, with offenders facing up to life imprisonment.

Lee was asked about Article 23 by two reporters at the press conference, after an annual Legislative Council agenda released last week confirmed that the Safeguarding National Security Bill would be discussed by lawmakers this year. But unlike other bills, the agenda did not specify whether such discussions would fall within the first or second half of the year.

Questioned on the timeline of the public consultation and legislative work, Lee said only that they would begin when the relevant government departments were ready.

The leader added that the city would take reference from other countries’ national security laws, especially those which were newer because they would “have sufficient foresight and can sufficiently handle risks posed by ways [of endangering national security] that we may not be able to predict now.”

Hong Kong authorities have said that legislative work for Article 23 would begin this year, and that it was necessary for combatting national security risks. Critics, however, fear it could further limit civil liberties in a city where Beijing’s security legislation has seen activists arrested and independent newsrooms shutter.

Lee said on Tuesday that the city had experienced the “risks and harms when national security is threatened” in 2019, referring to the extradition-bill protests and unrest that year as “Hong Kong version coloured revolution and black-clad violence.”

“We understand the importance of protecting national security,” Lee said, adding that the city would use “the most effective means to conduct legislative work.”

Legislation of Article 23 failed in 2003 following mass protests, but authorities said after the onset of the Beijing-imposed security law in 2020 that there was a need for further security legislation to plug loopholes.