Oct
30
“Subverting Freedom in Macau” from today’s Wall Street Journal Asia :
It’s been five years since pro-Beijing elements in Hong Kong tried — and failed — to curtail free speech in the former British colony. Now Macau Chief Executive Edmund Ho says it’s his “sacred duty” to try to do the same thing in his territory. The legislation he’s proposing represents the most serious threat to freedoms since Macau’s 1999 handover from Portugal to China.
Mr. Ho’s government proposed last week to enact enabling legislation on Article 23 of the territory’s miniconstitution, the Basic Law. As with Hong Kong’s Basic Law, Article 23 was inserted into the law by Beijing after the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy uprising. It says Macau’s government “shall enact laws, on its own, to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government, or theft of state secrets.”
Under Mr. Ho’s proposed national security legislation, offenders could be jailed for up to 30 years for such crimes. Trials on some offenses would not be public. At a press conference last week, Mr. Ho said “chanting a few slogans, writing a few articles criticizing the central government or the Macau government . . . won’t be regulated by this proposed law.” But Beijing uses such laws to quell dissent and there’s no guarantee that Macau would not do the same.
In addition, the proposed law would remove protection for whistleblowers exposing government corruption — a problem in a territory dominated by the gambling industry and with an entrenched mafia and a self-censoring press. Hong Kongers have questioned whether they would be subject to the law if they visited Macau.